the inconstancy of his heart; and even the people themselves observed some parts of his conduct which little suited the dignity of a king. Avoided equally by those who endeavoured to please the queen, who favoured Morton and his associates, or who adhered to the house of Hamilton; he was left almost alone in a neglected and unpitied solitude.

After the baptism of the young prince, Mary discovered no change in her sentiments with respect to the king. The death of Rizio, and the countenance he had given to an action so insolent and unjustifiable, were still fresh in her memory. She was frequently pensive and dejected. Though Henry sometimes attended at court, and accompanied her in her progresses through different parts of the kingdom, he met with little reverence from the nobles, while Mary treated him with the greatest reserve, and did not suffer him to possess any authority. The breach between them became every day more apparent; and no attempts to bring about a reconcilement were ever attended with success.

The haughty spirit of Darnly, nursed up in flattery, and accustomed to command, could not bear the contempt under which he had now fallen, and the state of insignificance to which he saw himself reduced. But in a country where he was universally hated or despised, he could never hope to form a party, which would second any attempt he might make to recover power. He addressed himself, therefore, to the pope, and to the kings of France and Spain, with many professions of his own zeal for the Catholic religion, and with bitter complaints against the queen, for neglecting to promote that interest: and soon after, he took a resolution, equally wild and desperate, of embarking on board a ship which he provided, and of flying into foreign parts.

He communicated the design to the French ambassador Le Croc, and to his father the Earl of Lennox. They both endeavoured to dissuade him from it, but without success. Lennox, who seems, as well as his son, to have lost the queen's confidence, and who, about this time, was seldom at court, instantly communicated the matter to her by a letter. Henry, who had refused to accompany the queen from Stirling to Edinburgh, was likewise absent from court. He arrived there, however, on the same day she received the account of his intended flight. But he was more than usually wayward and peevish; and scrupling to enter the palace unless certain lords who at tended the queen were dismissed, Mary was obliged to meet him without the gates. At last he suffered her to conduct him into her own apartment. She endeavoured to draw from him the reasons of the strange resolution which he had taken, and to divert him from it. In spite, however, of all her arguments and entreaties, he remained silent and inflexible. Next day the privy council, by her direction, expostulated with him on the same head. He persisted, however, in his sullenness and obstinacy; and neither deigned to explain the motives of his conduct, nor signified any intention of altering it. As he left the apartment, he turned towards the queen, and told her that she should not see his face again for a long time. A few days after, he wrote to Mary, and mentioned two things as grounds of his disgust. She herself, he said, no longer admitted him into any confidence, and had deprived him of all power; and the nobles, after her example, treated him with open neglect, so that he appeared in every place without the dignity and splendour of a king. While great preparations had been made by Mary for the baptism of the young Prince, Henry's

behaviour at this juncture, perfectly discovers the excess of his caprice as well as of his folly. He chose to reside at Stirling, but confined himself to his own apartment. And as the queen distrusted every nobleman who ventured to converse with him, he was left in absolute solitude. Nothing could be more singular, or was less expected, than his choosing to appear in a manner that both published the contempt under which he had fallen, and, by exposing the queen's domestic unhappiness to the observation of so many foreigners, looked like a step taken on purpose to mortify and to offend her. Mary felt this insult sensibly; and notwithstanding all her efforts to assume the gaiety which suited the occasion, and which was necessary for the polite reception of her guests, she was sometimes obliged to retire, in order to be at liberty to indulge her sorrow, and give vent to her tears. The king still persisted in his design of retiring into foreign parts, and daily threatened to put it

in execution.

Alarmed by the rumours of a design to seize his person and confine him to prison, Darnly soon afterwards left Stirling in an abrupt manner, and retired to Glasgow. Immediately upon the king's leaving Stirling, and before he could reach Glasgow, he was seized with a dangerous distemper. The symptoms which attended it were violent and unusual, and in that age it was commonly imputed to the effects of poison. It is impossible, amidst the contradictions of historians, to decide with certainty concerning its nature, or its cause. His life was in the utmost danger; but after languishing for some weeks, the vigour of his constitution surmounted the malignity of the disease.

Mary's neglect of the king, on this occasion, was equal to that with which he had treated her during her illness at Jedburgh. She no longer felt that

warmth of conjugal affection which prompts to sympathy, and delights in all those tender offices which sooth and alleviate sickness and pain. At this juncture, she did not even put on the appearance of this passion. Notwithstanding the king's danger, she amused herself with excursions to different parts of the country, and suffered near a month to elapse before she visited him at Glasgow. By that time, the violence of the distemper was over, and the king, though weak and languishing, was out of all danger.

The breach between Mary and her husband was not occasioned by any of those slight disgusts which interrupt the domestic union without altogether dissolving it. Almost all the passions, which operate with greatest violence on a female mind, and drive it to the most dangerous extremes, concurred in raising and fomenting this unhappy quarrel. Ingratitude for the favours she had bestowed, contempt of her person, violations of the marriage-vow, encroachments on her power, conspiracies against her favourites, jealousy, insolence, and obstinacy, were the injuries of which Mary had great reason to complain. She felt them with the utmost sensibility; and, added to the anguish of disappointed love, they produced those symptoms of despair which we have already described. Her resentment against the king seems not to have abated from the time of his leaving Stirling. In a letter written with her own hand, to her ambassador in France, just before she set out for Glasgow, no tokens of sudden reconcilement appear. On the contrary, she mentions, with some bitterness, the king's ingratitude, the jealousy with which he observed her actions, and the inclination he discovered to disturb her government, and at the same time talks of all his attempts with the utmost scorn.

After this discovery of Mary's sentiments, it was scarce to be expected that she would visit the king, or that any thing but marks of jealousy and distrust should appear in such an interview. This, however, was far from being the case; she not only visited Darnly, but, by all her words and actions, endeavoured to express an uncommon affection for him: And though this made an impression on the credulous spirit of her husband, no less flexible, on some occasions, than obstinate on others; yet, to those who are acquainted with the human heart, and who know how seldom and how slowly such wounds in domestic happiness are healed, this sudden transition will appear with a very suspicious air, and will be considered by them as the effect of artifice.

She employed all her art to regain his confidence, and then proposed to remove him to the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, under pretence that there he would have easier access to the advice of physicians, and that she herself could attend him without being absent from her son. The king was weak enough to suffer himself to be persuaded; and being still feeble and incapable of bearing fa tigue, was carried in a litter to Edinburgh.

The place prepared for his reception, was a house belonging to the provost of a collegiate church, called Kirk of Field. It stood almost upon the same spot where the house belonging to the principal of the university now stands. Such a situation, on a rising ground, and at that time in an open field, had all the advantages of healthful air to recommend it; but on the other hand, the solitude of the place rendered it extremely proper for the commission of that crime, with a view to which, it seems manifestly to have been chosen. Mary continued to attend the king with the most assiduous care. She seldom was absent from him