ever presided over the destinies of a nation. She was born at
Linlithgow on December 8, 1542, a few days before the death of
her father, James V., thus becoming a queen before she was a
week old. Her complex personality and varied accomplishments
have inspired many and various historians, but it has remained
for Major Martin Hume to demonstrate the historical fatality
of Mary's love affairs. In "The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of
Scots," published in 1903, Major Hume gives a convincing and
logical reason for Mary's political failure, inasmuch as it
did not spring from her goodness or badness as a woman, but
from a certain weakness of character. This epitome has been
prepared by Major Hume himself.


_I.--Betrothed in her Cradle_


When in the great hall at Worms, on that ever-memorable April day in
1521, before the panic-stricken princes, Luther insolently flung at the
emperor his defiance of the mediaeval church, the crash, though all
unheard by the ears of men, shook to their base the crumbling
foundations upon which, for hundreds of years, the institutions of
Europe had rested. The sixteenth century thenceforward was a period of
disintegration and reconstruction, in which fresh lines of cleavage
between old political associates were opened, new affinities were
formed, and the international balance re-adjusted.

In the long struggle of the house of Aragon, and its successor, Charles
V., with France for the domination of Italy, the only effectual
guarantee against England's actively aiding its traditional ally, the