l, having raised your bevy of phantoms, I hope
you do not intend to send them back to their cold beds to warm them? You
will put them to some action, and since you do threaten the Canongate
with your desperate quill, you surely mean to novelise, or to dramatise,
if you will, this most singular of all tragedies?"

"Worse--that is less interesting--periods of history have been, indeed,
shown up, for furnishing amusement to the peaceable ages which, have
succeeded but, dear lady, the events are too well known in Mary's days
to be used as vehicles of romantic fiction. What can a better writer
than myself add to the elegant and forcible narrative of Robertson?
So adieu to my vision. I awake, like John Bunyan, 'and behold it is a
dream.' Well enough that I awake without a sciatica, which would have
probably rewarded my slumbers had I profaned Queen Mary's bed by using
it as a mechanical resource to awaken a torpid imagination."

"This will never do, cousin," answered Mrs. Baliol; "you must get over
all these scruples, if you would thrive in the character of a romantic
historian, which you have determined to embrace. What is the classic
Robertson to you? The light which he carried was that of a lamp to
illuminate the dark events of antiquity; yours is a magic lantern to
raise up wonders which never existed. No reader of sense wonders at your
historical inaccuracies, any more than he does to see Punch in the show
box seated on the same throne with King Solomon in his glory, or to
hear him hallooing out to the patriarch, amid the deluge, 'Mighty hazy
weather, Master Noah.'"

"Do not mistake me, my dear madam," said I; "I am quite conscious of
my own immunities as a tale teller. But even the mendacious Mr. Fag, in
Sheridan's Rivals, assures us that, though he never scruples to tell
a lie at his master's command, yet it hurts his conscience to be found
out. Now, this is the reason why I avoid in prudence all well known
paths of history, where every one can read the finger posts carefully
set up to advise them of the right turning; and the very boys and girls,
who learn the history of Britain by way of question and answer, hoot at
a poor author if he abandons the highway."

"Do not be discouraged, however, cousin Chrystal. There are plenty of
wildernesses in Scottish history, through which, unless I am greatly
misinformed, no certain paths have been laid down from actual survey,
but which are only described by imperfect traditio