MARY. and to create himself a new interest with him in case he should be victorious over the rebels. Yet in these critical moments Bothwell neglected to make any application to him for the casket and the letters! On the 15th of June, all his towering imaginations were at once dashed to the ground. He had come to Carberry hill, followed by an army and accompanied by a queen; but he fled from it attended only by a single servant, and was glad to shelter himself in the castle of Dunbar, from the vengeance due to his crimes. Yet in this extremity of distress he is represented as trying a bold experiment, which he had not courage to try when he was fortified with the authority of his sovereign, and when he was facing the rebels in the field. In the very hour when almost every friend had deserted him, he expected a return of friendship from a man who had deserted him at first only because he suspected him to be in danger. At this period he sent his servant George Dalgleish to wait upon Balfour, the acting governor of the castle of Edinburgh, with a requisition for the box of letters, and to bring back the important charge, through ten thousand dangers, to Dunbar. Though this man was one of his agents in the murder of the king, and might therefore have been safely intrusted with any secret, he did not order him, as common sense requires he should have done, to destroy the letters as soon as he should get them into his possession. No! he sent him to fetch them from the castle, as if there was no danger in going thither, no doubt of receiving them there, and no difficulty in carrying them back. * To a traveller in an easy chair, all roads are smooth, and all days are fine. Accordingly this same Dalgleish, though the well-known servant of Bothwell, makes good his entrance at the gates of the city, though these were guarded by 450 harquebusiers all hostile to his master, finds his way to the castle, and delivers his message. But what is more astonishing than all, he actually receives the box of letters from Sir James Balfour. This indeed, says Mr Whitaker, "is o'erdoing Tergant; it out-herods Herod." Balfour was the ductile slave of selfishness. He had with infinite perfidiousness turned against his friend, his patron, and his queen, only because he saw them opposed by a party which he thought would prove too strong for them; but now when they were both plunged into the lowest state of distress, and branded with the appellation of regicides, his selfishness was suddenly changed into generosity, his meanness gave place to exalted sentiments, and, at the peril of his own life, he performed an heroic act of kindness! "In such circumstances (asks a contemporary writer), is it to be thought, either that the earl would send to the said Sir James, or that the said Sir James would send any thing to the earl? Is it likely? Is it credible?" No matter: Bothwell is made to send for his papers at a time when his difficulties and his despair render it improbable that he could think of them, and when it was absolutely impossible that he could recover them. His messenger accordingly is intercepted with the casket; and the adversaries of the queen, upon the 20th day of June, became possessed of vouchers with which they might operate her destruction. These inconsistencies are glaring, and of a force not easily to be controuled; and the story is open to other objec-
tions, which are, if possible, greater, and altogether insurmountable.