VOLUME 20. THE ABBOT; BEING THE SEQUEL TO THE MONASTERY. IN TWO VOLUMES. II. PARKER'S EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED, WITH A GENERAL PREFACE, AN INTRODUCTION TO EACH NOVEL, AND NOTES, HISTORICAL AND ILLUSTRATIVE, BY THE AUTHOR. BOSTON: SAMUEL H. PARKER. PHILADELPHIA: THOMAS, COWPERTHWAIT, & CO.- NEW YORK: C. S. FRANCIS.- BALTIMORE: CUSHING & SONS. 1845. THE ABBOT. CHAPTER I. Could valour ought avail or people's love, The Rose of Scotland had not wept in vain. Elegy in a Royal Mausoleum.-LEWIS. AT the gate of the court-yard of Lochleven appeared the stately form of the Lady of Lochleven, a female whose early charms had captivated James V., by whom she became mother of the celebrated Regent Murray. As she was of noble birth (being a daughter of the house of Mar) and of great beauty, her intimacy with James did not prevent her being afterwards sought in honourable marriage by many gallants of the time, among whom she had preferred Sir William Douglas of Lochleven But well has it been said, -Our pleasant vices Are made the whips to scourge us— The station which the Lady of Lochleven now held as the wife of a man of high rank and interest, and the mother of a lawful family, did not prevent her nourishing a painful sense of degradation, even while she was proud of the talents, the power, and the station of her son, now prime ruler of the state, but still a pledge of her illicit intercourse. Had James done to her, she said in her secret heart, the justice he owed her, she had seen in her son, as a source of unmixed delight and of unchast ened pride, the lawful monarch of Scotland, and one of the ablest who ever swayed the sceptre. The House of Mar, not inferior in antiquity or grandeur to that of Drummond, would then have also boasted a Queen among its daughters, and escaped the stain attached to female frailty, even when it has a royal lover for its apology. While such feelings preyed on a bosom naturally proud and severe, they had a corresponding effect on her countenance, where, with the remains of great beauty. were mingled traits indicative of inward discontent and peevish melancholy. It perhaps contributed to increase this habitual temperament that the Lady Lochleven had adopted uncommonly rigid and severe views of religion, imitating in her ideas of reformed faith the very worst errors of the Catholics, in limiting the benefit of the gospel to those who profess their own speculative tenets. In every respect, the unfortunate Queen Mary, now the compulsory guest, or rather prisoner of this sullen lady, was obnoxious to her hostess. Lady Lochleven disliked her as the daughter of Mary of Guise, the legal possessor of those rights over James's heart and hand, of which she conceived herself to have been injuriously deprived; and yet more so as the professor of a religion which she detested worse than Paganism. Such was the dame, who, with stately mien, aud sharp yet handsome features, shrouded by her black velvet coif, interrogated the domestic who steered her barge to the shore, what had become of Lindesay and Sir Robert Melville. The man related what had passed, and she smiled scornfully as she replied, "Fools must be flattered, not foughten with.-Row back-make thy excuse as thou canst-say Lord Ruthven hath already reached this castle, and that he is impatient for Lord Lindesay's presence. Away with thee, Randal-yet stay-what galopin is that thou hast brought hither ?" "So please you, my lady, he is the page who is to wait upon 66 Ay, the new male minion," said the Lady Lochleven; "the female attendant arrived yesterday. I shall have a well-ordered house with this lady and her retinue; but I trust they will soon find some others to undertake such a charge. Begone, Randal-and you (to Roland Græme) follow me to the garden." She led the way with a slow and stately step to the small garden, which, inclosed by a stone wall ornamented with statues, and an artificial fountain in the centre, extended its dull parterres on the side of the court-yard, with which it communicated by a low and arched portal. Within the narrow circuit of its formal and limited walks, Mary Stuart was now learning to perform the weary part of a prisoner, which, with little interval, she was doomed to sustain during the remainder of her life. She was followed in her slow and melancholy exercise by two female attendants; but in the first glance which Roland Græme bestowed upon one so illustrious by birth, so distinguished by her beauty, accomplishments, and misfortunes, he was sensible of the presence of no other than the unhappy Queen of Scotland. Her face, her form, have been so deeply impressed upon the imagination, that, even at the distance of nearly three centuries, it is unnecessary to remind the most ignorant and uninformed reader of the striking traits which characterize that remarkable countenance, which seems at once to combine our ideas of the majestic, the pleasing, and the brilliant, leaving us to doubt whether they express most happily the queen, the beauty, or the accomplished woman. Who is there, that, at the very mention of Mary Stuart's name, has not her countenance before him, familiar as that of the mistress of his youth, or the favourite daughter of his advanced age? Even those who feel themselves compelled to believe all, or much of what her enemies laid to her charge, cannot think without a sigh upon a countenance expressive of anything rather than the foul crimes with which she was charged when living, and which still continue to shade, if not to blacken her memory. That brow, so truly open and regal-those eyebrows, so regularly graceful, which 1* VOL. II. |