was
queen of a nation whose affairs were entangled with those of a much
greater one. Each sought for her own ideal of love until she found it.
Each won that love recklessly, almost madly. Each, in its attainment,
fell from power and fortune. Each died before her natural life was
ended. One caused the man she loved to cast away the sovereignty of a
mighty state. The other lost her own crown in order that she might
achieve the whole desire of her heart.

There is still another parallel which may be found. Each of these women
was reputed to be exquisitely beautiful; yet each fell short of
beauty's highest standards. They are alike remembered in song and story
because of qualities that are far more powerful than any physical charm
can be. They impressed the imagination of their own contemporaries just
as they had impressed the imagination of all succeeding ages, by reason
of a strange and irresistible fascination which no one could explain,
but which very few could experience and resist.

Mary Stuart was born six days before her father's death, and when the
kingdom which was her heritage seemed to be almost in its death-throes.
James V. of Scotland, half Stuart and half Tudor, was no ordinary
monarch. As a mere boy he had burst the bonds with which a regency had
bound him, and he had ruled the wild Scotland of the sixteenth century.
He was brave and crafty, keen in statesmanship, and dissolute in
pleasure.

His first wife had given him no heirs; so at her death he sought out a
princess whom he pursued all the more ardently because she was also
courted by the burly Henry VIII. of England. This girl was Marie of
Lorraine, daughter of the Duc de Guise. She was fit to be the mother of
a lion's brood, for she was above six feet in height and of proportions
so ample as to excite the admiration of the royal voluptuary who sat
upon the throne of England.

"I am big," said he, "and I want a wife who is as big as I am."

But James of Scotland wooed in person, and not by embassies, and he
triumphantly carried off his strapping princess. Henry of England
gnawed his beard in vain; and, though in time he found consolation in
another woman's arms, he viewed James not only as a public but as a
private enemy.

There was war between the two countries. First the Scots repelled an
English army; but soon they were themselves disgracefully defeated at
Solway Moss by a force much their inferior in numbers. The shame of it
broke King James