The Queen's Maries: A Romance of Holyrood

The Queen's Maries: A Romance of Holyrood

TO A LADY WHOSE UNTIRING ENERGY AND HISTORICAL RESEARCH HAVE ADDED LARGELY TO THE LITERATURE OF OUR COUNTRY, AND WHOSE ELOQUENT DEFENCE OF A CALUMNIATED QUEEN HAS IDENTIFIED WITH MARY STUART THE NAME OF AGNES STRICKLAND, THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. Many a smiling plain, many a wooded slope and sequestered valley adorns the fair province of Picardy. Nor is it without reason that her Norman-looking sons and handsome daughters are proud of their birth-place; but the most prejudiced of them will hardly be found to affirm that her seaboard is either picturesque or interesting; and perhaps the strictest search would fail to discover a duller town than Calais in the whole bounds of France. With the gloom of night settling down upon the long low line of white sand which stretches westward from the harbour, and an angry surge rising on the adjacent shoal, while out to seaward darkness is brooding over the face of the deep, an unwilling traveller might, indeed, be induced to turn into the narrow ill-paved streets of the town, on the seaman-like principle of[2] running for any port in a storm; but it would be from the sheer necessity of procuring food and lodging, not from any delusive expectation of gaiety and amusement, essential ingredients in a Frenchmans every-day life. And yet Calais has been the scene of many a thrilling incident and stirring event. Could they speak, those old houses, with their pointed gables, their overhanging roofs, and quaint diamond-paned windows, they could tell some strange tales of love and war, of French and English chivalry, of deeds of arms performed for the sake of honour, and beauty, and ambition, and goldthe four strings on which most of the tunes are played that speed the Dance of Deathof failures and successes, hopes and disappointments, the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the cross-purposes, the hide-and-seek, that constitute the game of life. In that very house, over the way yonderwith its silent courtyard, in which the grass shoots up vigorously between the stones, and from which to-day nothing more unusual issues than an old peasant woman in a clean cap, carrying a young child with a dirty faceslept, perhaps, the loveliest woman the world ever saw, a widow, while yet a bride, a queen while yet a child, on her way from one royal throne to take possession of another. Yes, here she lay the night before she quitted her dear France, never to see it again; the bright, the beautiful, the beloved, a very rose amongst all the flowers of the garden, a very gem amongst all the gold and tinsel that surrounded her, the link in a line of kings, the pride of two countries, the fairest of Gods creaturesMary, Queen of Scotshere she lay, with life and love and hope before her, and slept, and dreamed not of Fotheringay. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 49953
Author: Whyte-Melville, G. J. (George John)
Release Date: Sep 13, 2015
Format: eBook
Language: English