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Show MARY STUART'S FIRST Ki.SS IN SCOTLAND. History offers scarce a sadder spectacle spec-tacle than that of a young queen, girlish, girl-ish, refined, gentle, thrown among a coarse and semi-barbarous peop'le. Mary Stuart must have had a premonition pre-monition of the calamities to come when she bade adieu to "la belle France" in those terms which have become be-come historical. Robertson describes Scotland, when Mary Stuart entered it, as being in a state of anarchy, "when the administration fell into the hands of a young queen, not 19 years of age. unacquainted with the manners and laws of her country, a stranger to her subjects, without experience, without allies, without' friends. The beauty and gracefulness of her person drew universal admiration; the elegance and politeness of her manners commanded general respect. To all the charms of her sex she added many accomplishments accomplish-ments of the other. The progress she had made in all the arts and sciences was far beyond what is commonly attained at-tained by princes." She was utterly unprotected among her savage nobles, and that they were savage is proved by the fact that out of the 105 kings preceding pre-ceding her, fifty-six were slain. Burton, Bur-ton, in his "'History of Scotland," says: "While every head of a considerable family down to the humble land owner had some regular armed followers, the crown alone had none. All Mary's efforts ef-forts to establish a royal guard were sternly resisted." The government of the English queen femented discords by means of spies, money and plots, and the religious hatred born of the Reformation threatened threat-ened to make the road of this young girl from France a very thorny and terrible one. Of the Scottish nobles the historian Burton says: "Their dress was that of the camp or stable; they were dirty in person and abrupt and disrespectful in manner, carrying on their disputes and even fighting out their quarrels in the presence of royalty. roy-alty. They were all ardent reformers, for the divisions of the church lands had more charm for them than the most glorious promised Paradise in the future. Imagine the feelings of a young woman wo-man accustomed to the polish of the French court, thrown among such a rabble. She did her best to conciliate them. She issued a proclamation forbidding for-bidding any attempt to interfere with the Protestant religion, which she found established in her realm, and she claimed the right to have Mass celebrated in her own chapel. The reformers, who claimed religious freedom free-dom for themselves, were not anxious that those who differed from them J should enjoy it. j The scene at her first Mass is thus described by an unbiased historian: When the service was about to begin, Lord Lindsay, one of the most bigoted of the "reformed nobles," rushed In, clad in armor, exclaiming, "The idol-ator idol-ator priest shall die the death!" The almoner, fortunately for himself, took refuge, after he had been driven from the altar "with broken head and bloody ears," but, fortunately, all the ncbles surrounding Mary .were not actual brutes, and the priest was protected from further violence until he finished saying Mass. Upon which, says the gentle John Knox, with pious simplicity, simplic-ity, "the godly departed with great I grief of heart." Thus it was that the 1 reformers of Scotland endea?Dred to convert Mary Stuart to their new religion; re-ligion; thus it was that they inaugurated inaugu-rated religious toleration. a |