EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 57 



could have been put on again, and the execution of 

 Queen Mary, because it could not be done and undone at 

 will, was beyond doubt the chief trouble of her reign. 



It was a remarkable circumstance which pitted 

 against each other two such striking extremes, bodily 

 as well as mental, as Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart. 

 Nevertheless the points which are common to every 

 human being are much more numerous than those 

 which are peculiar to the individual. There was not 

 only this common basis of human nature in Elizabeth 

 and Mary, there was something more : both were 

 singularly capable, brilliant, witty and brave (Mary 

 being the braver and her bravery being the more 

 tried). The two queens were both educated to the 

 then highest ideal of female education ; both, too, had 

 much experience of life the larger and the less ele- 

 vating share falling to Mary's lot. But in all else they 

 were extreme contrasts. What in Elizabeth were 

 slight though shrill rivulets of love and hate and anger 

 and scorn, or of pity or gratitude, were mighty 

 torrents in Mary. The impassioned Mary had her 

 paroxysms of fierce anger, but she had nothing of 

 fussiness or captiousness or fitfulness. 



Because of her deeply emotional nature the Scottish 

 Queen had to fight against some sadly troublous 

 elements ; to those elements and to that conflict Eliza- 

 beth was a stranger. It is true that in the block of 

 human nature out of which the ever-pathetic figure of 

 Mary was carved, there came to light undoubted flaws ; 

 but it would be unjust to forget that she lived in a 

 time when life was held to be less sacred than it now 

 is. Popes, Kings, Henry, Elizabeth, and Mary among 

 others, sanctioned or forgave murder : the moral differ- 

 ence between murder for greed and murder for passion 



