hear of him in the subsequent parts of
this narrative. He followed Mary to Scotland when she returned to
that country, and became afterward her secretary, and also her
embassador on many occasions. He was now quite young, and when he
landed at Brest he traveled slowly to Paris in the care of two
Scotchmen, to whose charge he had been intrusted. He was a young man
of uncommon talents and of great accomplishments, and it was a mark
of high distinction for him to be appointed page of honor to the
queen, although he was about nineteen years of age and she was but
seven.

After the queen regent's return to Scotland, Mary went on improving
in every respect more and more. She was diligent, industrious, and
tractable. She took a great interest in her studies. She was not only
beautiful in person, and amiable and affectionate in heart, but she
possessed a very intelligent and active mind, and she entered with a
sort of quiet but earnest enthusiasm into all the studies to which
her attention was called. She paid a great deal of attention to
music, to poetry, and to drawing. She used to invent little devices
for seals, with French and Latin mottoes, and, after drawing them
again and again with great care, until she was satisfied with the
design, she would give them to the gem-engravers to be cut upon
stone seals, so that she could seal her letters with them. These
mottoes and devices can not well be represented in English, as the
force and beauty of them depended generally upon a double meaning in
some word of French or Latin, which can not be preserved in the
translation. We shall, however, give one of these seals, which she
made just before she left France, to return to Scotland, when we come
to that period of her history.

The King of France, and the lords and ladies who came with Mary from
Scotland, contrived a great many festivals and celebrations in the
parks, and forests, and palaces, to amuse the queen and the four
Maries who were with her. The daughters of the French king joined,
also, in these pleasures. They would have little balls, and parties,
and pic-nics, sometimes in the open air, sometimes in the little
summer-houses built upon the grounds attached to the palaces. The
scenes of these festivities were in many cases made unusually joyous
and gay by bon-fires and illuminations. They had water parties on the
little lakes, and hunting parties through the parks and forests. Mary
was a very graceful and beautiful rid