to his rights; and God forgive all those who have thirsted without cause for my blood." 5. With much difficulty, and after many entreaties, she prevailed on the two earls to allow Melvil, together with three of her men-servants and two of her maids, to attend her to the scaffold. It was erected in the same hall where she had been tried, raised a little above the floor, and covered, as well as a chair, the cushion, and block, with black cloth. Mary mounted the steps with alacrity, beheld all this apparatus of death with an unaltered countenance,and signing herself with the cross, she sat down in the chair. Beale read the warrant for execution with a loud voice, to which she listened with a careless air, and like one occupied in other thoughts. Then the dean of Peterborough began a devout discourse, suitable to her present condition, and offered up prayers to heaven in her behalf; but she declared she could not in conscience hearken to the one nor join in the other; and kneeling down repeated a Latin prayer. When the Dean had finished his discourse, she with an audible voice, and in the English tongue, recommended unto God the afflicted state of the church, and prayed for prosperity to her son, and for a long life and peaceable reign to Elizabeth. She declared that she hoped for mercy only through the death of Christ, at the foot of whose image she now willingly shed her blood; and lifting up and kissing the crucifix, she thus addressed it: "As thy arms, Jesus, were extended on the cross; so with the outstretched arms of thy mercy receive me, and forgive my sins." 6. She then prepared for the block by taking off her veil and upper garments; and one of the executioners rudely endeavouring to assist, she gently checked him and said with a smile, that she had not been accustomed to undress before so many spectators, nor to be served by such valets. With calm but undaunted fortitude, she laid her neck on the block; and while one executioner held her hands, the other at the second stroke, cut off her head, which falling out of its attire, discov ered her hair already grown quite grey with cares and sorrows. The executioner held it up still streaming with blood, and the dean crying out, "So perish all queen Elizabeth's enemies," the earl of Kent alone answered amen. The rest of the spectators continued silent, and drowned in tears; being incapable, at that moment, of any other sentiments but those of pity or admiration. 7. Such was the tragical death of Mary, queen of Scots, after a life of forty-four years and two months, almost nineteen years of which she passed in captivity. All contemporary authors agree in ascribing to Mary the utmost beauty of countenance, and elegance of shape, of which the human form is capable. Her hair was black, though according to the fashion of that age she frequently wore borrowed locks, and of different colours. Her stature was of a height that rose to the majestic. She danced, she walked, and rode with equal grace. Her taste for music was just, and she both sung and played upon the lute with uncommon skill. wards the close of her life, long confinement and the coldness of the houses in which she had been imprisoned, brought on a rheumatism, which often deprived her of the use of her limbs. No man, says Brantome, ever beheld her person without admiration and love, or will read her history without sorrow. To 8. To all the charms of beauty, and the utmost elegance of external form, she added those accomplishments which render their impression irresistible. Polite, affable, insinuating, sprightly, and capable of speaking and of writing with equal ease and dignity. Sudden, however, and violent in all her attachments; because her heart was warm and unsuspicious. Impatient of contradiction; because she had been accustomed from her infancy to be treated as a queen. No stranger, on some occasions, to dissimulation; which, in that perfidious court where she received her education, was reckoned among her necessary arts of government. insensible of flattery, or unconscious of that pleasure with which almost every woman beholds the influence of her own beauty. Formed with the qualities which we love, not with the talents that we admire; she was an agreeable woman, rather than an illustrious queen. Not The vivacity of her spirit not sufficiently tempered with sound judgment, and the warmth of her heart, which was not at all times under the restraint of discretion, betrayed her both into errours and into crimes. 9. None of her women were suffered to come near her dead body, which was carried into a room adjoining to the place of execution, where it lay for some days, covered with a coarse cloth torn from a billiard table. The block, the scaffold, the aprons of the executioners, and every thing stained with her blood, were reduced to ashes. Not long after, Elizabeth appointed her body to be buried in the Cathredal of Peterborough with royal magnificence. But this vulgar artifice was employed in vain; the pageantry of a pompous funeral did not efface the memory of those injuries which laid Mary in her grave. James, soon after his accession to the English throne, ordered her body to be removed to Westminster abbey, and to be deposited among the monarchs of England. QUESTIONS. 1. When was Mary of Scots beheaded?-2. Who attended her at her execution?-3. What clergyman attended her?—4. Was she pleased with his services?-5. What was her age?6. How much of her life had she passed in prison? 44 1 FALL OF JERICHO. WHO is that chief, already taught to urge * Joshua vi. 20. Held by that hero's arm, to light his wrath, And roll their glorious eyes upon his crimson path, The sons of Levi, round that city, bear CHARLES I. OF ENGLAND. 1. FROM the sixth to the twentieth of January was spent in making preparations for his extraordinary trial. The court of justice consisted of an hundred and thirty-three persons named by the commons; but of these, never above seventy met upon the trial. The members were chiefly composed of the principal officers of the army, most of them of very mean birth, together with some of the lower house, and a few citizens of London. Bradshaw, a lawyer, was chosen president; Coke was appointed solicitor for the people of England; Dorislaus, Steele, and Aske, were named assistants. The court sat at Westminster hall. 2 The king was now conducted from Windsor to St. James', and the next day was brought before the high court to take his trial. When he was brought forward, he was conducted by the mace-bearer to a chair placed within the bar. Though long detained a prisoner, and now produced as a criminal, he still sustained the dignity of a king; he surveyed the members of the court with a stern, haughty air, and without moving his hat sat down, while the members were also covered. His charge was then read by the solicitor, accusing him of having been the cause of all the bloodshed that followed since the commencement of the war; at that part of the charge, he could not suppress a smile of contempt and indignation. After the charge was finished, Bradshaw directed his discourse to the king, and told him, that the court expected his answer! 3. The king, with great temper, entered upon his defence, by declining the authority of the court. (He represented, that, having been engaged in treaty with his two houses of parliament, and having finished almost every article, he expected a different treatment from that he now received. He perceived, he said, no appearance of an upper house, which was necessary to constitute a just tribunal. That he was himself the king and fountain of law; and consequently could not be tried by laws to which he had never given his assent; that having been entrusted with the liberties of the people, he would not now betray them, by recog nizing a power founded in usurpation; that he was willing, before a proper tribunal, to enter into the particulars of his defence; but that before them, he must decline any apology for innocence, lest he should be considered the betrayer of, and not a martyr for, the constitution. 4. Bradshaw, in order to support the authority of that court, insisted that they had received their power from the people, the source of all right. He pressed the prisoner not to decline the authority of the court, which was delegated by the commons of England; and interrupted and over-ruled the king in his attempts to reply. In this manner was the king three times produced before the court; and as often persisted in declining its jurisdiction. The fourth and last time he was brought before the self-created tribunal, as he was proceeding thither, he was insulted by the soldiers and the mob, who exclaimed, "Justice! justice! execution! execution!" but he continued undaunted. His judges having now examined some witnesses, by whom it was proved that the king had appeared in arms against the forces commissioned by parliament, they pronounced sentence against him. 5. The conduct of the king under all these instances of low bred malice, was great, firm, and equal; in going through the hall from this execrable tribunal, the soldiers and rabble were again instigated to cry out jus |
