great an enterprise. Buchanan's History is
not, more than other great histories which have succeeded it, an
absolutely impartial work; but it is, throughout all his own stirring
and momentous age, the record of a bystander with abundant means of
knowledge and a keen apprehension of all the controversies and struggles
of his time. If he may perhaps glorify too much the character of his
patron and friend the Regent Murray, and take the darkest view of Mary,
we can only say that he would have been more angel than man had he kept
himself absolutely without bias in that hot and still unexhausted
debate. And there was nothing angelical about the old scholar who had
taken a part in so many historical events, from the siege of Wark
Castle, where he was present as a boy, to the Conferences at York and
Westminster, which were matters of yesterday. The science of history has
so much developed since his time that it may almost be said to have made
a new beginning; and much that was considered authoritative and
convincing then has fallen into the limbo of uncertainty, when not
rejected altogether. The many differing motives and agencies which can
only be fully estimated when the period of discussion is past, have come
to occupy a far greater space in the mind of the historian than had been
dreamed of in Buchanan's days; and the careful examination of evidence
with which we are now familiar was unknown either in the study of the
writer or the courts of law during a time which has left endless
questions from both to be debated and re-debated by succeeding
generations. But yet Buchanan's History remains the most important and
dignified record of the national existence up to his time; and no one
would now venture to treat the story of ancient Scotland, the chronicles
of her kings, or even the still undecided questions of Mary Stewart's
life and reign, without the guidance more or less of this great
authority. It was a bold step to dedicate to King James a record in
which his mother's life was denounced and condemned with such unsparing
freedom; but the astonishing absence of sympathy or human understanding
shown in this was shared by the greater part of Buchanan's
contemporaries, who evidently felt the facts of the mother's guilt to be
too abundantly demonstrated and universally consented to, to demand any
delicacy of statement as addressed to her son. No one, we think, can
entertain any doubt of the historian's own strong conviction on