Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/630

Rh 602 M A R M A R Elizabeth. At niglit she took a graceful and affectionate leave of her attendants, distributed among them her money and jewels, wrote out in full the various legacies to be con veyed by her will, and charged her apothecary Gorion with her last messages for the king of Spain. In these messages the whole nature of the woman was revealed. Not a single friend, not a single enemy, was forgotten ; the slightest service, the slightest wrong, had its place assigned in her faithful and implacable memory for retribution or reward. Forgiveness of injuries was as alien from her fierce and 1 &amp;gt;yal spirit as forgetfulness of benefits; the destruction of England and its liberties by Spanish invasion and conquest was tho strongest aspiration of her parting soul. At eight next morning she entered the hall of execution, having taken leave of the weeping envoy from Scotland, to whom sh.3 gave a brief message for her son ; took her seat on the scaffold, listened with an air of even cheerful unconcern to the reading of her sentence, solemnly declared her innocence of the charge conveyed in it and her consolation in the prospect of ultimate justice, rejected the professional services of Richard Fletcher, dean of Peterborough, lifted up her voice in Latin against his in English prayer, and when he and his fellow-worshippers had fallen duly silent prayed aloud for tha prosperity of her own church, for Elizabeth, for her son, and for all the enemies whom she had commended overnight to the notice of the Spanish invader; then, with no less courage than had marked every hour and every action of her life, received the stroke of death from the wavering hand of the headsman. Mary Stuart was in many respects the creature of her age, of her creed, and of her station ; but the noblest and most noteworthy qualities of her nature were independent of rank, opinion, or time. Even the detractors who defend her conduct on the plea that she was a dastard and a dupe are compelled in the same breath to retract this implied reproach, and to admit, with illogical acclamation and incongruous applause, that the world never saw more splendid courage at the service of more brilliant intelli gence, thit a braver if not &quot;a rarer spirit never did steer humanity.&quot; A kinder or more faithful friend, a deadlier or more dangerous enemy, it would be impossible to dread or to desire. Passion alone could shake the double fortress of her impregnable heart and ever active brain. The passion of love, after very sufficient experience, she apparently and naturally outlived ; the passion of hatred and revenge was as inextinguishable in her inmost nature as the emotion of loyalty and gratitude. Of repentance it would seem that she knew as little as of fear, having been trained from her infancy in a religion where the Decalogue was supplanted by the Creed. Adept as she was in the most exquisite delicacy of dissimulation, the most salient note of her original disposition was daring rather than subtlety. Beside or behind the voluptuous or intellectual attractions of beauty and culture, she had about her the fresher charm of a fearless and frank simplicity, a genuine and enduring pleasure in small and harmless things no less than in such as were neither. In 15G2 she amused herself for some days by living &quot; with her little troop &quot; in the house of a burgess of St Andrews &quot;like a burgess s wife,&quot; assuring the English ambassador that he should not find the queen there, &quot;nor I know not myself where she is become.&quot; From Sheffield Lodge, twelve years later, she applied to the archbishop of Glasgow and the cardinal of Guise for some pretty little dogs, to be sent her in baskets very warmly packed, &quot;for besides reading and working, I take pleasure only in all the little animals that I can get.&quot; No lapse of reconciling time, no extent of comparative indulgence, could break her in to resignation, submission, or toleration of even partial restraint. Three months after the massicre of St Bartholomew had caused some additional restrictions to be placed upon her freedom of action, Shrewsbury writes to Burghley that &quot; rather than continue this imprisonment she sticks not to say she will give her body, her son, and country for liberty &quot; ; nor did she ever show any excess of regard for any of the three. For her own freedom of will and of way, of passion and of action, she cared much ; for her creed she cared something ; for her country she cared less than nothing. She would have flung Scotland with England into the heilfire of Spanish Catholicism rather than forego the faintest chance of personal revenge. Her profession of a desire to be instructed in the doctrines of Anglican Protestantism was. so transparently a pious fraud as rather to afford confirma tion than to arouse suspicion of her fidelity to the teaching of her church. Elizabeth, so shamefully her inferior in personal loyalty, fidelity, and gratitude, was as clearly her superior on the one all-important point of patriotism. The saving salt of Elizabeth s character, with all its wellnigh incredible mixture of heroism and egotism, meanness and magnificence, was simply this, that, overmuch as she loved herself, she did yet love England better. Her best though not her only fine qualities were national and political, the high public virtues of a good public servant ; in the private and personal qualities which attract and attach a friend to his friend and a follower to his leader, no man or woman was ever more constant and more eminent than Mary Queen of Scots. (A. c. s.) MARYBOROUGH, a town of Queensland, Australia, in the county of March, on the left bank of the Mary river, 25 miles from its mouth, about 180 miles north of Brisbane, in 25 35 S. lat and 152 43 E. long. It is the principal shipping port for an extensive district, com municating by steamer and coach with Brisbane and (since 1881) by railway with the Gympie gold-fields, 54 miles to the south. A large shipbuilding yard, saw-mills, dis tilleries, breweries, and soap-works are among the industrial establishments of the town, and extensive sugar factories exist in the neighbourhood. Besides a handsome court house and town-hall, the public buildings comprise a hospital, a school of arts with a considerable library, and immigration barracks. Gas-lighting and water from the Tinana creek were both introduced in 1879. The popula tion of the census district in 1876 was 8608, that of the municipal area about 7000, Maryborough had only about 600 inhabitants in 1860; the municipality dates from 1861, and was reincorporated in 1875. MABYLAND Copyright, 1882, lij W. T. Branthj. MARYLAND, one of the thirteen original States of Plate the American Union, lies between the parallels of 37 53 and 39 43 26&quot; N. lat., and 75 4 and 79 33 W. long. It is bounded on the N. by Pennsylvania and Delaware ; E. by Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean ; and S. and W. by Virginia and West Virginia. The total area of the State is 12,210 square miles, of which about 2350 square miles are covered by the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and of the Potomac and other rivers. Topography. The configuration of the State is very irregular. Its extreme length east and west is about 200 miles, and its breadth varies from 4 to 120 miles. The coast-line has no harbours, but a narrow beach and a shallow lagoon, called Sinepuxent Bay, extend along its entire length. The central geographical feature of the State is the Chesapeake Bay, the greatest inlet in the United States, and one which is navigable throughout for the largest vessels. The bay at its ocean mouth, between Cape Charles and Cape Henry, is 12 miles wide; it extends north and south about 200 miles ; its breadth at