Body, Parentage and Character in History Part 3

Mr. Carlyle, in his own rousing way and on a subject which deeply interests him--Luther and the Reformation--mingles fine literary vigour with an indifference to physiological teaching which is by no means habitual with him. The heaven-born hero tells us what has become false and unreal, and shows us--it is his special business--how we may _go back_ to truth and reality. The humbler student believes that we are constantly journeying _towards_ truth and reality--these lie not behind but in front of us. The school of prophets tells us that the hero alights in front of us and stands apart. The student declares that we all move together; that we partly make our heroes, and partly they make us; that we have grades of heroes; that they are not at all supernatural--we touch them, see them, know them, send them to the front, keep them and dismiss them at our will, or what seems our will. Carlyle affirms that modern civilisation took its rise from the great scene at Worms. The truths of organisation, of body, of brain, of race, of parentage would rather say that civilisation itself was not born of but in reality gave rise to Luther and the scene at Worms.

The Reformation did not give private judgment; private judgment gave the Reformation.

In all revolutions there is a mixture of the essential and the accidental.

During the long succession of the ordinary efforts of growing peoples there are also from time to time unusual efforts to bring to an end whatever of accident is most at variance with essential truth and reason and sanity and honour. In the reformations of a growing people, whatever the age in which they happen, whatever the religion or policy or conduct of the age, leading spirits rebel against what is most oppressive and resent what is most arrogant in that age; they reject what is most false and laugh out of court what is most ridiculous. In the sixteenth century men felt no special or inherent resentment to arrogance because it lifted its head in Rome; they looked on the so-called miracle of transubstantiation with no special or peculiar incredulity; their sense of humour was not necessarily tickled by the idea that a soul leaped out of purgatory when a coin clinked in Tetzel's box. Those were matters of accident and circ.u.mstance; they were simply the most intolerable or incredible or preposterous items of the century. Given other preceding accidents--another Deity, or one appearing in another century or arising in another people; another emperor than Constantine; other soldiers than Constantine's--and the sixteenth-century items of oppression and falsehood would have been there, it is true, but they would have been other than they were.

We are often told that great movements come quickly, and are the peculiar work of heroes. We are told, indeed, that from time to time mankind degenerates into a ma.s.s of dry fuel, and that at the fitting moment a hero descends, as a torch, and sets the ma.s.s on fire. Nay, moreover, if we doubt this teaching we are dead to poetic feeling and have lost our spiritual ideals. Happily, however, if phantasy dies, poetry still lives.

Leaders and led, teachers and taught, are all changing and always changing; but no change brings a lessened poetic susceptibility or a lessened poetic impulse. If, in future, historians and critics come to see that the organisation and bodily proclivity and parentage of men have really much to do with men, let us nevertheless be comforted--the ether men breathe will be no less ample, the air no less divine. Every age is transitional--not this or that--and the ages are bound together by unbroken sequence. As with the movements so is it with the leaders: they are in touch with each other as well as in touch with their followers. All ages have some men who are bolder than others, or more reflective than others, or more courageous, or more active. At certain epochs in history there have been men who combined many high qualities, and who in several ways stood in front of their time. Wyclif was not separated from his fellows by any deep gulf, neither was he, as regards time, the first in his movement, but no leader ever sprang so far in front of the led.

General leaders appear first, and afterwards, when the lines of cleavage are clearer, special leaders arise. Wyclif was a general leader, and therefore had many things to do. He did them all well. He was a scholar, a theologian, a writer, a preacher. It is his att.i.tude to his age and to all ages, and to national growth, which interests us--not his particular writing, or his preaching, or his detailed views. He propounded, he defined, he lighted up, he animated, he fought. In one capacity or in two Wyclif might have soared to a loftier height and have shone a grander figure. But he did what was most needed to be done then and there. The time was not ripe, and it did not lie in Wyclif to make it ripe, for the Reformation, but he showed the way to the Reformation; he introduced its introducers and led its leaders. The special leaders appeared in due time, and they also were the product of their time. An Erasmus shed more light than others on burning problems; a Calvin formulated more incisively than his fellows; a Luther fought more defiantly; and, a little later, a Knox roused the laggards with fiercer speech. It is interesting to note that the fighters and the speakers in all movements and at all times come most quickly to the front; it is for them that the mult.i.tude shouts its loudest huzzas and the historian writes his brightest pages. But let us not forget this one lesson from history and physiology: it is not given--or but rarely given--to any one man to do all these things, to innovate, to illuminate, to formulate, to fight, to rouse; it is certainly not given to any one man to do all with equal power, and certainly not all at once. For there is a sum-total of brain-force, not in the individual only, but in the community and in the epoch. In one stream it is powerful; if it be divided in several streams each stream is weaker. It was a theological torrent at the beginning of the sixteenth century, a literary torrent at the century's close. We have (perhaps it is for our good) several streams, we have however, we all hope, a good total to divide. Curiously, too, the most clear-sighted of leaders never see the end, never indeed see far into the future of their movement. The matters and forces which go to form a revolution are many and complex, reformers when striving to improve a world often end in forming a party. If the leaders are clear-sighted, the party will be continuous, large, long-lived; dim-sighted enthusiasts, even when for the moment successful, lead a discontinuous, short-lived, spasmodic crowd. Sometimes a leader steps forth clear and capable, but the mult.i.tude continues to sleep. Wyclif, for example, called on his generation to follow him in a new and better path. He seemed to call in vain. In the sixteenth century men were awake, stirring, resolved; but no leaders were ready. Fortunately the people marched well although they had no captains to speak of. The age was heroic although it had no conspicuous heroes.

Although in its forms, its beliefs, its opinions, its policy, its conduct, there was much that was accidental, it was nevertheless inevitable and essential that the Reformation should come. It mattered not whether this thing had been done or that; whether this particular leader led or that; whether this or that concession had been made at Rome. If Erasmus could not fight Luther could. If Rome could concede nothing, much could be torn from her. There is, indeed, much fighting and tearing in history: complacent persons, loftily indifferent to organisation, and race, and long antecedent, are astonished that men should fight, or should fight with their bodies, or that, when fighting they should actually kill each other. In all times, alas, the fittest, not the wisest, has prevailed--and the fittest, alas, has been cruel. In the seventeenth century Parliament and Charles Stuart fought each other by roughest bodily methods, and Parliament, proving victorious, killed Charles. Had Charles conquered, and could Parliament have been reduced to one neck or a dozen, we may be quite sure that the one neck or the dozen would have been severed on the block.

When the thousand fermenting elements came together in the sixteenth century cauldron, no number of men, certainly no one man, certainly not Henry, could do much to hinder or to help on the seething process. This of course was not Henry's view. He believed himself to be--gave himself out to be--the fountain of truth. We know that he and an _admiring_ (not an _abject_) Parliament proposed an Act to abolish diversity of opinion on religious matters. We know too, that while he graciously permitted his subjects to read the Word of G.o.d, he commanded them to adopt the opinions of the king. It was indeed cheap compulsion, for he and the vast ma.s.s of his subjects held similar opinions. Nevertheless, it is true that Henry, with characteristic sagacity, turned to the right spot and at the right moment when the cauldron threatened to boil over, or possibly to explode.

At a critical epoch he helped to avert bloodshed; for in this island there was no war of peasants, or princes, or theologians.

Those who say that the great divorce question brought about or even accelerated the Reformation, are those who see or wish to see the bubbles only, and cannot, or will not see the stream--its depth and strength,--on which the bubbles float. For the six-wives matter was in reality a bubble, large it is true, prismatic, many-coloured, interesting, visible throughout Europe, minutely gossiped over on every hearth. If King Henry, however, had had no wife at all, the Reformation would have come no more slowly than it did; if he had had, like King Solomon, seven hundred wives, it would have come no more quickly. Henry was not himself a reformer, and but little likely to lead reformers. Under a fitful and petulant exterior the king was a cold, calculating, self-remembering man. The reformers were a self-forgetting, pa.s.sionate, often a frenzied party, and as a rule, firebrands do not follow icebergs. If imperious circ.u.mstance loosened Henry's moorings to Rome, he had no more notion of drifting towards Augsburg or Geneva, than, a little later, his daughter Elizabeth had of drifting to Edinburgh and Knox. Henry had no deep attachment, but he clung to the old religion, chiefly perhaps because it was old, as much as he could cling to anything; he had no deep hatreds, but, as heartily as his nature permitted, he detested the new. He would have disliked it all the more, had that been possible, could he have looked with interpretative glance backward to the seed-time of Wyclif's era, or forward to the ripe harvest of the seventeenth century. Could it have been made plain to Henry that he was helping to put a sword into a Puritan's hand and bring a King's head to the block, he would have had himself whipped at the tomb of Catharine of Aragon, and would have thrown his crown at the Pope's feet.

He a.s.sumed the heads.h.i.+p of the English Church, it is true; but even good Catholics throughout Europe did not then so completely as now accept the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, and central ideas had not then so completely swallowed up the territorial. If Henry had not taken the heads.h.i.+p of the English Church when he did, the Church would probably have had no head at all, and religious teaching in this country would have fared much as it fared in Switzerland and Scotland and North Germany. As it was, Henry simply believed himself to be another Pope, and London to be another Rome. He, the English Pope, and the Pope at Rome would, for the most part, work together like brothers--work for the diffusion of the _one_ truth (which all sorts and conditions of Popes believe they possess), and work therefore for the good of all people.

Had the great European religious movement reached our island in any other reign than Henry's it would not have run quite the same course it did. Of all the Kings who have ruled over us Henry VIII. was the only King who was at the same time willing enough, able enough, educated enough (he had been trained to be an Archbishop), and pious enough to be, at any rate, the first head of a great Church.

But it is said: "Look at the destruction of the religious houses; surely that was the work of heresy and greed." Henry had no heresy in his nature, but he was not without greed, and as he was certainly extravagant, he had therefore the stronger incentives to exaction. But in our history the foible of a King avails but little when it clashes with the conscience, the ideal, the will of a people. Henry's greed, moreover, whatever its strength, was less strong than his conservatism, less strong than his piety. Stronger, too, than all these combined was his boundless love of popularity--a love which alone would have preserved the monasteries could the monasteries have been preserved by any single man. But new ideas and new religious ideals had come in, and the new religious ideals and the old religious houses could not flourish together. The existence of those houses had long been threatened. One hundred years before, Parliament had more than once seriously discussed the appropriation of ecclesiastical funds to military purposes. Cardinal Morton, after impartial inquiry, contemplated sweeping changes. Wolsey, a good Catholic, had suppressed numerous houses. It is interesting to know that at one period of his life Sir Thomas More thought of retiring into a religious house, but after carefully studying monastic life he gave up the project. It is not necessary to sift and resift the evidence touching the morality of the monasteries. Probably those inst.i.tutions were not so black as their enemies, new or old, have painted them, nor so white as they appear in the eyes of their modern friends. But whether they were fragments of Hades thrust up from below, or fragments of the celestial regions let down from above, or whatever else they were, their end was come. Many causes were at work. They were coming into collision with the rapidly growing modern social life--a life more complex than at any time before, more complex in its roots, its growths, its products, and its needs. The newer social life had developed a pa.s.sionate love of knowledge; it had formed a loftier ideal of domestic life. It pondered too over our economic problems, and disliked the ceaseless acc.u.mulation of land and wealth in ecclesiastical hands. Does any one imagine that a close network of inst.i.tutions, which were at any rate not models of virtue; inst.i.tutions which hated knowledge and thrust it out of doors; which directly or indirectly cast a slur on the growing domestic ideal; which told the awakening descendants of Scandinavian and Norseman and Saxon, that their women were unclean--that their mothers and daughters were "snares;" does anyone imagine that such a network could be permitted to entangle and strangle modern life? It has already been said that the newer social ideas were destined to arise, and that therefore the older religious houses were doomed to fall. It mattered little the particular year in which they fell; it mattered little who seemed to deal the final blow. Many centuries before, human nature being what it was, and social conditions what they were, quiet retreats had met a want--they were fittest to live and they lived. But a succession of centuries brought change--a little in human nature, much in social conditions, very much in thought and opinion, and the retreats, the inner life and opinions of which had not kept pace with life outside, were no longer needed, no longer fittest, and they fell. Henry did not destroy them. Catholicism, which neither made them pure nor made them impure, was unable to preserve them. Could the long buried bones of their founders have come to life again and have put on the newer flesh, thought, with newer brain, the newer thought, they would have found quite other outlets for their energy, leisure and wealth. It is so with all founders and all inst.i.tutions. It is so at this moment with the inst.i.tutions which were born of the Reformation itself. Naturalists tell us that the jelly-like ma.s.s, the amaeba, embraces everything, both the useful and the useless, that comes in its way, but that in time it relaxes its embrace on the useless. So the civilisation of a growing people is like a huge amaeba, which slowly enfolds men and ideas, and incidents, and systems, and then sooner or later it disenfolds the unsuitable and the worn-out.

QUEEN ELIZABETH AND QUEEN MARY.

NOTE X.

Few rulers, few persons indeed, have ever been so much alike as our two rulers Henry VIII. and his daughter Elizabeth. No man was ever so like Henry as was the woman Elizabeth; no woman ever resembled Elizabeth so closely as did the man Henry. Both father and daughter were extreme examples of the intellectual and unimpa.s.sioned temperament. High capacity, acute perception, clear insight, correct inference were present in both.

Both, too, were capricious, fault-finding, querulous and vain. Both, moreover, had their preferences and their dislikes. Both, too, felt and showed resentment when their vanity was wounded. But in neither of them, it may be truly affirmed, was there any consuming pa.s.sion--any fervent love, or invincible hatred, or fierce jealousy, or overwhelming anger.

Those who preach the doctrine of an essential difference between the s.e.xes and who, with the injustice which so frequently accompanies the abounding self-importance of masculinity, would deprive women not only of "equality of sphere" but "equality of opportunity," may study the character of Henry and Elizabeth with great advantage. Human beings are first of all divided (I have elsewhere contended) into certain types of character and only afterwards into men and women. Many men are by nature devoted lovers and parents and friends; many women are not. Elizabeth was one of a number--a large number--of women who have, it may be, many of the qualities which tell in practical and public life, and but little of the emotion which wells up in true wifehood and motherhood and friends.h.i.+p.

Henry and Elizabeth stand far above the average level of rulers. In sagacity, in tact and in statesmans.h.i.+p only two of their successors can compare with them. But the methods of Oliver Cromwell and William III.

were very different from the Tudor methods. Cromwell and William strove to be guided by what they sincerely held to be lofty principles. Henry and Elizabeth were guided merely, though wisely guided, by the fineness of their instincts. Fine instincts were perhaps better fitted for the earlier time, and lofty principles for the later. It is easier, alas, to bungle in formulating and in applying principles than in trusting to adroitness and intuitions.

All the elements of character which Henry possessed were found also in Elizabeth, and many of these elements, though not all, they possessed in equal degree. They were alike in capacity, courage, sincerity, versatility, industry; alike in their conservative proclivities and also in their love of pageantry--for Elizabeth, like Henry, revelled in public business and in public pleasures; she delighted in progresses, shows, masks and plays. They were alike, too, in their sense of duty, in their desire for the welfare of the people, and also in their thirst for the people's good opinion. But Elizabeth, although she had immense self-importance (she heartily approved of the queen and, heartily indeed, of nothing else), was perhaps less self-confident than her father. She was not quite comfortable in her heads.h.i.+p of the Church--but then she had not been educated for the Church as her father had been, and she did not possess her father's devotional nature. Her conduct was however more decorous than her father's, notwithstanding that she was distinctly less religious than he--less religious in principle, in inward conviction and in outward wors.h.i.+p. If she was less devout than Henry she had however a larger share of fitfulness than even he. The historian who more vividly than any other has placed the Tudor time before us speaks of Elizabeth's "ingrained insincerity;" the words "ingrained fitfulness" would perhaps be more correct, for she was in truth as sincere as her fitfulness permitted her to be. Although it is true she was not without--no one at that time was quite without--insincerity and intrigue and duplicity and falsehood in her diplomatic methods, she was fairly sincere in her views and aims and conduct. But unfortunately her views and aims and conduct were constantly changing. She was sincere too easily and too frequently. She had a dozen fits of sincerity in a dozen hours. Whenever she sent a message, no matter how carefully the message had been considered, a second was sent to recall or change it, and very shortly a third messenger would be despatched in pursuit of the second. Urgent and critical circ.u.mstance alone, and frequently not even this, forced upon her any conclusive action. I am compelled to agree with those who believe that the most distressing incident of her life was the final decision touching Mary Stuart's death: it was distressing on several grounds--she was not naturally cruel, or, like her father, cruel to those only who stood in her path; she did not like to kill a queen; and, above all, she hated to do anything which (like marriage, to wit) could not be undone. Elizabeth was compelled by temperament to be always doing something, but by temperament also she was always reluctant to get anything done. In her two bushels of occupation there were not two grains of performance.

Her extreme fitfulness had at least one fortunate result--it saved many lives. Henry's frequent change of view and of policy was unquestionable, but the change was slow enough to give to the ever-watchful enemies of a fallen minister time enough to tear the fallen minister to pieces. But if a minister of Elizabeth's fell, his head was in little danger: if he fell from favour to-day, he was restored to-morrow. He might trip twenty times, and as many times his rivals would be on the alert; but twenty pardons would be granted all in good time.

Touching the question of marriage the queen was far wiser than her father.

Neither father nor daughter had the needful qualities which go to make marriage happy, and both had certain other qualities which in many cases make it an intolerable burden. Henry, unlike Elizabeth, did not discover this, for his perceptive powers generally were less acute than hers. She probably knew that in her inmost heart (her brain was sufficiently acute to gain a glimpse of what was in her heart and what was not) she was a stranger to the deep and sustained affections without which marriage is so often a cruel deception. She had admirers and favourites it is true; and, after the fas.h.i.+on of the time, was unseemly enough in her fits of romping and her fits of pettishness. But there has not yet been anywhere, or at any time, under the sun a healthful temperament which has objected to admiration and entertainment, and probably there never will be.

Elizabeth's att.i.tude to the religious condition of her people marks a decided movement, if not an onward movement: for we must never forget that a mult.i.tude of high-minded and capable souls believe that the several steps of the Reformation were downward steps. But what were the steps, and what especially was Elizabeth's step? The popes (and their times) had said, _in effect_, you need not read and you must not think or inquire; your duty is to obey and believe. Henry (and his time) said, you may think and you may read, especially if your reading enables you to understand the King, but you must believe what the King believes and wors.h.i.+p as the King wors.h.i.+ps. Elizabeth (and her times), still more at the mercy of rising Teutonic waves, exclaimed, you may think and read and inquire and believe as you like--especially as you insist upon doing so--but you really must, all of you, go to church with me on Sunday mornings. Elizabeth's church-going act, by the bye, is still unrepealed. Long after, William III. (and his time, though William was before his time) said, you may think, read, believe, and publicly wors.h.i.+p as you will, but you must believe something and you must wors.h.i.+p somewhere. John Milton, before William in time and long before him in largeness of view, was the one colossal figure who fought bravely and single-handed for freedom in every domain of thought and speech and conduct.

The Tudor time, more than any other in our history, lends itself to the study of character; a study which, although difficult, is the less difficult in that whatever of change may take place, old elements of character do not altogether disappear and entirely new elements do not make their appearance. These elements lie everywhere around us. A great writer and an acute observer of men declares indeed that we all contain the elements of a Luther and a Borgia (his ideal of the best and worst elements), and that if a man cannot see these near at hand he will not find them though he travel from Dan to Beersheba. The Tudor and the Stuart periods alike present remarkable persons and remarkable incidents; but in the earlier period the men and women were more striking than the events, while events attract our attention more than individuals in the later.

With the Tudors men and women seemed to lead, for men and women were proportionately the stronger; circ.u.mstance seemed to be the stronger in the Stuart times.

No century contains three royal figures so striking in themselves and so clearly revealed to us as are the figures of Henry and Elizabeth and Mary in the sixteenth. Their capability, their vitality and their attainments would have made them striking persons in any position of life. Each, indeed, possessed the three qualities which make a really interesting personality--and such personalities are but a small proportion of the neutral-tinted mult.i.tude who are good and kind and industrious--and nothing more. They, the three personalities, could all see facts for themselves; they could all see the relative value of facts (the rarest of the three qualities); and they could all draw sound inferences from the larger facts.

The three individuals presented however but two types of character. Henry and Elizabeth were examples of one type and Mary of another. The Tudor father and daughter were, as we have already seen, not examples merely but _extreme_ examples of the unimpa.s.sioned, ever active, ever visible cla.s.s.

Mary was as extreme an example of the impa.s.sioned, meditative, persistent and tenacious cla.s.s. It was a remarkable coincidence that pitted two such mental and bodily extremes against each other. All sane human beings have much more of that which is common to the character of the race than they have of that which is 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 had certain unusual advantages in common, for both were educated to the highest ideal of female education--very curiously a higher ideal then than at any other time before, or even since, until our own generation; both, too, had much experience of life--the larger and the less elevating share falling to Mary's lot. But here the resemblance ceases. What in Elizabeth Tudor were slight though shrill rivulets of love and hate and anger and scorn and jealousy, or of pity or grat.i.tude, were mighty and rus.h.i.+ng torrents in Mary Stuart. We have seen what Elizabeth was: in many ways Mary was the exact opposite, for she was not at all given to bustle or change or acrimony or captiousness or suspicion. She was not, it is true, without vanity; she had ample grounds for having it and she was deeply human, but (it was not so with Elizabeth) her pride was even greater than her vanity.

The elements which met together in Mary were all of a finer quality than those which were found in Elizabeth; but in Mary some troublous elements were added to the choicer ones. In her high land there were ominous volcanic peaks, while in the decorous plain of Elizabeth's character there was a monotonous blending of vegetation and sand. In some of our greatest characters (the truism is well-worn) there have been grave defects. Burns'

life never comes to any generous mind save with the deepest regret as well as the keenest admiration. Bacon's was a great mind with a great fault.

Shakspere and Goethe--the two foremost spirits which time has yet given to us--are not held to have led altogether stainless lives. Now the Queen of Scots was not by any means one of the immortals, but she was nevertheless and in truth a great woman. Yet in the splendid block out of which the ever-pathetic figure of Mary was chiselled there came to light an ineradicable flaw. The good and evil of all these characters were mainly, though not wholly (for circ.u.mstance must not be forgotten), due to organisation and inheritance. A little difference in their organisation, and they would have been other individuals than they were, and would most likely have remained unknown to us; but having the parentage they had, and being what they were, a little difference in circ.u.mstance would probably have mattered little. What there was in each of organisation, what of circ.u.mstance, and what of volition, is a problem the solution of which is still far off. In all of them volition, whatever that may be, did its best; organisation, let us say, did its worst; circ.u.mstance looked on, helping here and hindering there,--the compromise is history.

As the six-wives business clings to Henry's name, so does the Darnley matter, though curiously with less odium, cling to that of Mary. Henry has had no friends save those who lived in or near his time. In our time an inquirer, here or there, strives perhaps to gain for him something of impartial judgment. Mary has never been without warm friends, and her friends seem to grow in number and in warmth. The controversy still rages touching Mary's part in the tragic event which inflicted so deep a wound into her life. But although the controversy goes on at even fever heat, the public judgment remains cool and is probably just. It is kept cool and just by the weight of a few colossal truths which the deftest manipulation of a cloud of smaller truths cannot hide. At critical moments the physiological historian, who looks steadily at a few large incidents in the light of human nature, discovers clues which escape the vision of the purely literary historian, who is for ever diving--and usefully diving--into the wells of parchment detail. In reality it matters little whether this diver or that has dived most deeply; matters little whether certain doc.u.ments are spurious or genuine. Mary Stuart accepted--she certainly did not reject--the pa.s.sion of a certain man; that man was a leader among a number of men who murdered her husband; after the murder Mary Stuart married that particular man, and thereby most a.s.suredly held a candle to murder. This was Mary. Now if everything that has been said in her favour could be proved, she would be but little better than this; if everything that has been said against her could be proved, she would be but little worse.

The student of historic characters never forgets the time the country and the circ.u.mstance in which his characters lived. We are now looking at a time when not only n.o.ble and ign.o.ble characters existed side by side, but when n.o.ble and less n.o.ble elements existed together in one and the same character. For indeed the good elements of a better time come in slowly, and the evil elements of a bad past die a lingering death. The active Scotland (there was, we know, a good quiet Scotland in the background), the active Scotland of Tudor times was given over to factions, fanatics, self-seekers and a.s.sa.s.sins. Life was taken and given with scant ceremony.

The highest personages of that time contrived murder, or sanctioned it, or forgave it--the popes did, continental sovereigns did, Henry did, Elizabeth did. The murders thus contrived or sanctioned or condoned were, it is true, mainly on behalf of thrones or dominions or religions, while the murder which Mary a.s.suredly forgave, if she did not sanction, was on behalf of her pa.s.sions. The moral difference between murder for a crown and murder for a love we may not now discuss.

It was to this Scotland, the active and factious Scotland just described, that the young queen of nineteen years was brought--brought from a different atmosphere and with an unpropitious training. The more favoured Elizabeth meanwhile was ruling over a quieter, a more united people, and was helped at her council-table by high-minded and unselfish men. It is useless now perhaps to ask if we may be allowed to admire the gifts, to deplore the faults, and to pity the fate of the more unfortunate queen. We can indeed, individually, do what we please, but the queen's posterity with no uncertain voice has declared that we may. Emerson says that the great soul of the world is just, and the great soul has kept Mary within the territory of its favour. It would seem that the affection and devotion which were given to Mary were not based on any single great or on any group of great actions; they were based (it is to her credit) on daily acts of kindliness and patience and unruffled grace. The sum of Mary's qualities, whatever they were, endowed her with the rare gift of making the world her friend; and the world does not, as a rule, make lasting friends.h.i.+ps on insufficient grounds. Mary indeed, with all her faults, deserved a better country than Scotland; and England, it may be added, deserved a more gracious queen than Elizabeth. But whatever she deserved or whatever she was fitted for, Mary's fate was destined to be one of the saddest of recorded time. Inward force and outer circ.u.mstance are so commingled that mortal reason fails to disentangle them. To-day men _seem_ to put a curb on circ.u.mstance, and to-morrow circ.u.mstance _seems_ to run away with men. An ocean of complex and imperious circ.u.mstance surged around two queens, one it lifted up and kept afloat and carried into a secure haven, the other it tossed mercilessly to and fro and finally drew her underneath its waves.

A number of leading Scottish n.o.bles gave out and probably believed that the wretched Darnley's life was incompatible with the general good.

Bothwell was but one of this number. Yet how clear it has ever been to all eyes, save to those of the blindly pa.s.sionate actors themselves, that the Scottish queen's fatal error, even if there were no grave error before, was in marrying any one of the misguided band. But misguidance was in the ascendant. Could she by some magic web have concealed the husbands from each other and have married them all, she would at any rate have fared no worse than she did. But, to be serious, if a queen marries one of half a dozen ambitious a.s.sa.s.sins, the other five will a.s.suredly make her life intolerable and her rule impossible.

In no aspect of character did the two queens differ more than in their att.i.tude to religion. Elizabeth's piety, like her father's, though less deep than his, was of a similar pa.s.sionless, perceptive, unreflective order. Mary's religion, like Elizabeth's, like that of all individuals in all parts of the world, was no doubt at first the product of her early surroundings; but with the Scottish queen it was much more than this--it was a profoundly pa.s.sionate conviction and a deeply revered ideal. A living writer, who is perhaps unrivalled in the historic art and who rarely errs in his historic judgments, is less happy than is his wont in his verdict on the catholic queen. He avers that she had no share "in the deeper and n.o.bler emotions;" yet almost in the same breath he states that she had "a purpose fixed as the stars to trample down the Reformation." To have a purpose "fixed as the stars" to trample down _one_ religion was, in that age of the world, surely to have a purpose "fixed as the stars" to strengthen and protect _another_; to yearn to put down the Reformation was surely to yearn to bring in catholicism--catholic teaching and catholic rites and catholic rule. We may not be catholics, but we are not ent.i.tled to say that from an impa.s.sioned catholic woman's point of view this was not a high ideal; it had been the ideal of the judicial mind, Sir Thomas More, as well as the ideal of the enthusiast, Ignatius Loyola; it had been for a thousand years the ideal of a mult.i.tude of n.o.ble natures both men and women. Elizabeth, opportunely enough, had no ideals of any kind; ideals indeed are often inconvenient in a ruler; but she had, despite her acrimonious speech, plenty of sincerely good wishes and good intentions for all the world. If the Queen of England had no ideals she had many devices, and one was to check the flow of all sorts of zeal, especially Protestant zeal. In the two lives religion told in different ways--the difference was in the two natures, be it noted, not in the two religions.

Elizabeth, with a skin-deep religion only, was evenly and enduringly virtuous. Mary had ardent and deep convictions, but her career was not one of unbroken virtue. Elizabeth was certainly unfortunate in her religious att.i.tudes. She did not like the Protestants for she was not a good Protestant; the Catholics did not like her for she was not a good Catholic. In religion, indeed as in all things, she was greatly influenced by her inborn spirit of "contrariness." If the Catholics had intrigued less persistently against her throne and her life, and if (the idea is sufficiently ludicrous) the Queen of Scotland had chanced to run in harness with the hated John Knox (hated of both queens), she would gladly have given the rein to her Catholic impulses.

The two queens differed as much in body as in mind. I have elsewhere sought to show not only that certain leading features of character tend to run together (in itself a distinct contribution to our knowledge), but also that these allied features are a.s.sociated with a group of bodily peculiarities, a contribution, if it really is a contribution, of greatly additional interest. Elizabeth, large and pink-skinned like her father, was by no means without impressiveness and even stateliness. She carried her head a little forward and her chin a little downward, both these positions being due to a slightly curved upper spine. Her hair was scanty and her eyebrows were practically absent. All these bodily items, as well as her mental items, she inherited from her father. Mary had a wholly different figure and a different presence; her head was upright, her spine straight; in her back there was no convexity either vertically or transversely. Her eyebrows were abundant and her head of hair was long and ma.s.sive. All these peculiarities, too, we may be quite sure, she derived from her parentage (not necessarily the nearest parents) on one side or the other. In my little work on body and parentage in character I urge--it is well to say here--that the bodily signs of certain cla.s.ses of character (two more marked and one intervening) are now and then subject to the modifying influences of ailment and accident, and especially when these happen in early life. In Elizabeth and Mary, however, no such influences disturbed the development of two strongly-marked examples, both in body and in character, of two large cla.s.ses of women and, with but little alteration, of two large cla.s.ses of men also.

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