ter to abjure the
Catholic faith, and with the title of Regent, and under the name of the
Earl of Murray, to become so fatal to poor Mary. From Brest, Mary
went to St. Germain-en-Laye, where Henry II, who had just ascended the
throne, overwhelmed her with caresses, and then sent her to a convent
where the heiresses of the noblest French houses were brought up. There
Mary's happy qualities developed. Born with a woman's heart and a man's
head, Mary not only acquired all the accomplishments which constituted
the education of a future queen, but also that real knowledge which is
the object of the truly learned.

Thus, at fourteen, in the Louvre, before Henry II, Catherine de Medici,
and the whole court, she delivered a discourse in Latin of her own
composition, in which she maintained that it becomes women to cultivate
letters, and that it is unjust and tyrannical to deprive flowery of
their perfumes, by banishing young girls from all but domestic cares.
One can imagine in what manner a future queen, sustaining such a thesis,
was likely to be welcomed in the most lettered and pedantic court in
Europe. Between the literature of Rabelais and Marot verging on their
decline, and that of Ronsard and Montaigne reaching their zenith, Mary
became a queen of poetry, only too happy never to have to wear another
crown than that which Ronsard, Dubellay, Maison-Fleur, and Brantome
placed daily on her head. But she was predestined. In the midst of those
fetes which a waning chivalry was trying to revive came the fatal joust
of Tournelles: Henry II, struck by a splinter of a lance for want of
a visor, slept before his time with his ancestors, and Mary Stuart
ascended the throne of France, where, from mourning for Henry, she
passed to that for her mother, and from mourning for her mother to that
for her husband. Mary felt this last loss both as woman and as poet; her
heart burst forth into bitter tears and plaintive harmonies. Here are
some lines that she composed at this time:--

"Into my song of woe, Sung to a low sad air, My cruel grief I throw, For
loss beyond compare; In bitter sighs and tears Go by my fairest years.

"Was ever grief like mine Imposed by destiny? Did ever lady pine, In
high estate, like me, Of whom both heart and eye Within the coffin lie?

"Who, in the tender spring And blossom of my youth, Taste all the
sorrowing Of life's extremest ruth, And take delight in nought Save in
regretful thought.

"All that was swe