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Gallery, Regent Street, one of the most | Club) that he never missed attending
interesting of the numerous relics of then from 1817 to 1831, when the fatal
Mary Queen of Scots was a "gold or
richly gilt key, with a gothic bow highly
decorated, damasked over with engraved
flowers, having the date 1568 deeply cut
along the edges of the wards, and the
inscription Mary Reg.' round the rim
of the bow."

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This key, which was taken out of Lochleven, was lent by Lady Elizabeth Leslie-Melville Cartwright, and the following history of its discovery was appended to this touching souvenir of the Scottish queen :

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loss of health obliged him to seek for its restoration in foreign parts. Before he went abroad he presented me with a pledge of his regard, on which I set a high value a most curious and magnificent key of great size, which he said in the note accompanying it had been given to him as the key of the apartments in Lochleven Castle in which Queen Mary was confined. He added that it should be followed by a more particular account of how he came by it. In the mean time, he said, "This key was found by some fisher- the friend who had sent it to him was a men in their nets. Taken by them to sound antiquary, not likely to be imthe minister of Kinross, who gave it to posed on himself, and sure not wilfully Lord Leven. He sent it to Lady Har- to impose on others. That that genriet St. Clair for the purpose of having [tleman believed it to be the key. As it sketched. She had a sketch made to himself, Sir Walter added that he of it, which sketch is now at Dysart House."

would only say that if it was not the
key, it deserved to be so from its
elegance, strength, and structure. I
afterwards received the more detailed
and particular account."

The hill, or height, where the queen
was believed to have landed on the
lake shore obtained, it is supposed, in
memory of that event, the name of the

A "curious and ancient iron key, much corroded, measuring seven inches in length, and showing remains of inlaid brass and richly cut wards, with rounded ornament on stem, and remains of art-handle," stated to have been found at Lochleven, was presented to the Museum of the Scottish" Mary Knowe;" but the place pointed Antiquaries by Professor Simpson in 1829.

Another antique key of elaborate workmanship, having figures of angels and birds twisted into the scroll-work which forms the handle, was found by a young man while digging among the ruins of Lochleven Castle in the autumn of 1831.

out by Honeyman when in his sixty-
eighth year to Robert Annan, Esq.,
surgeon, Kinross, and others, as being
that where he had found the keys
when a lad, is about three-quarters of a
mile to the north of that hill
"from
the eastern, or Fish Gate of Kinross
House, one hundred and seventy-two
yards, and from the eastern wall of the
old churchyard, eighty-four yards."

The large and very elegant key in the family of Adam, of Blair-Adam, An additional bunch of eight keys,2 which was exhibited at Queen Mary's united by a brooch and flat hook-supTercentenary Exhibition at Peterbor- posed, from their "unique" form and ough, was given to the grandfather of fine workmanship, to have been those the late Sir John Adam by Sir Walter of Queen Mary's wardrobes Scott, who believed it to be the key also found in 1831, by a native of Kinof the apartments in Lochleven Castle, ross, in a "little sandy bay" on the having received it from a most trust-north side of the islet known as the worthy source." "Paddock Bower," less than three

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In the liber rarissimus of Blair-Adam | hundred yards to the eastward of the the key is thus referred to by the writer: "I must remark in passing that Sir Walter Scott was so pleased with our meetings (of the Blair-Adam

1 So called from the basket of fish sculptured on the top.

2 Now in the possession of the S. S. A., Edinburgh.

4

old churchyard of Kinross, nearly in a borhood of Sir William Kirkaldy, of line with the donjon of the castle, and with the spot· one hundred yards distant-where the large keys now at Dalmahoy were formerly picked up.

Grange, unquestioned, and gained the Fifeshire coast, when, speeding over the rough waters of the Firth, she and her rapidly increasing company landed, according to local tradition, at the ancient wooden pier which formerly jutted into the sea just above the tower of South Queensferry, where she was met and welcomed by Lord Claud Hamilton, son of the Duke of Châtelherault, at the head of fifty armed cavaliers of his name and lineage, and other loyalists of the neighborhood."

From the circumstance of the finding of the keys near to the north-west margin of the lake, and other corroborative evidence, Mr. Annan, from whose interesting notes on the antiquities of Kinross-shire we have derived the greater part of our information, dismisses as improbable the "Mary Knowe " tradition. He strengthens his arguments by pointing out the fact that Afterwards she was conducted by the had Mary in the course of her adven- devoted Lord Seton to his castle of turous voyage made that her goal, she West Niddrie, in Linlithgowshire, must have passed a castellated edifice,1| where, alas! amid joyful greetings and belonging to, and then occupied by, renewed homage, was enacted the the Douglases of Lochleven, which,"last bright scene" of Mary Stuart's had the poor queen attempted to do sadly chequered existence. Here let with her slender retinue, consisting of us leave her, exulting in her newly three persons, namely, Jane Kennedy, found freedom, once more a queen, the youth Willie Douglas, and a little girl of ten years, and that in the twilight of a May evening, she would have exposed herself to almost certain recapture.

Happily, however, all went well with the royal lady on this memorable occasion. She accomplished her landing in safety, and her dreary imprisonment of ten months and a half was now at an end.

A little later on, and Mary, full of hope and animation, escorted by the horsemen headed by John Beton, brother to the Archbishop of Glasgow, who had received her on the lake shore, "swept past the hostile neigh

1 Its ruined remains, covered with ivy and moss, are still to be seen close to the old margin of the loch.

and surrounded by those of her nobles and gentlemen whom, as Miss Agnes Strickland beautifully expresses it, " English gold had not corrupted, nor successful treason daunted." 2

ELLEN E. GUTHRIE.

? Mr. A nan, in his notes, says that if the southMary's Tower, from a vague tradition that the uneastern or Glassen Tower, also named Queen fortunate queen was imprisoned in it, was really the scene of her confinement, the most insecure

place in all the fortress had been chosen for her prison house, its windows being only some nine feet from the ground; and that no part of Kinross is visible from it. Whereas, if Sir Walter Scott's accepted as the true one, where he makes it appear account of Mary's escape in "The Abbot" be that a light shone nightly from the cottage of Blinkhoolie as a signal to the royal captive and her watchful attendants, and which also corresponds with the supposed route as indicated by the finding of the various keys, then the queen's apartments must have been in the west side of the donjon.

ACTION OF QUININE.-An explanation | reaction, is a strong poison for the protoof the therapeutic effect of quinine in ma-plasms of decomposing plants, and greatly laria has been found. So long ago as 1867 hinders many fermenting and putrescent Dr. Karl Binz, professor of pharmacology processes. A. Laveran, the discoverer of at Bonn, gave an explanation which was the Plasmodium malariæ, has demonstrated little noticed at the time, but has now been that this organism disappears from the signally confirmed by the discovery of the blood of malaria patients after the adminisgerm of malaria. He showed that quinine tering of quinine, and that quinine, if hydrochlorate, with neutral or slightly basic | mitted to act upon it directly, kills it.

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English Mechanic.

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For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & CO.

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A HYMN FOR HARVEST. Now to thee, gracious Lord of the Seasons, be honor and glory and praise, That again in the joy of the harvest our jubilant anthem we raise.

Though many the fears that beset us, though faith waxes feeble and cold, Thy bow, with its promise unbroken, glitters still as it glittered of old.

Though weary we grow in our watching the weeks of the drought as they pass, When the earth is as iron beneath us, and the heaven above us as brass,

Yet the showers come back in their season; once more in the land there is seen The brook brimming over with crystal, the grass as the emerald green.

Though troubled the spirit within us, when the mist upon valley and plain Lies thick, and the clouds in their armies return again after the rain;

Yet the sun cometh forth as a giant, and after the tempest the morn

Is cloudless and fair, and the color grows golden and rich on the corn.

For seed-time and harvest we thank thee; our fears as the shadows have fled; Thou hast given his seed to the sower, thou hast given the eater his bread. ALFRED CHURCH. Ashley Rectory, Tetbury.

Spectator.

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When skies are scorched with noon or blurred with night,

SCATTERED.

Somewhere, on opening wings of early SCATTERED to east and west and north,

light,

The young dawn breaketh; without haste

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Some with the faint heart, some the stout,

Each to the battle of life went forth,

And all alone we must fight it out.

We had been gathered from cot and grange,

From the moorland farm and the terraced street,

Brought together by chances strange, And knit together by friendship sweet.

Not in the sunshine, not in the rain,

Not in the night of the stars untold, Shall we ever all meet again,

Or be as we were in the days of old.

But as ships cross, and more cheerily go, Having changed tidings upon the sea, So I am richer by them, I know,

And they are not poorer, I trust, by me.

From The National Review.
THE TUSCAN NATIONALITY.

etry; when we talk of Italian literature, we mean Tuscan literature; By the tombs of the Volumuii here, when we talk of Italian art, we mean half-way along the white and dusty Tuscan art; when we talk of Italian road from Perugia to Assisi, one truth, greatness in any way (save only politlong half-perceived, is borne in upon ically), we mean Tuscan greatness. me even more fully than ever, how Of course, in a general way, people much and in how many connections have long since grasped this truth, in when we speak of Italy we really mean part at least; that is to say, they have Etruria; how completely all good recognized that in our modern world, things that have come out of the Ital- from the tenth century onward, Tusian soil or character are at bottom cany has always taken the lead in Etruscan. Italy, intellectually and aesthetically. But that is not enough. I desire here to prove (or at least to suggest) a great deal 'nore than that—namely, that the entire position of the Italian people as to art and literature, in times ancent or modern, is due to the Tuscan èlement only; and that from beginning to end the Tuscan people have been one and the same, the sole race in the peninsula capable of adopting and still further developing the gifts of Hellenic and Eastern culture.

I write, of course, with the damning shadow of that famous chapter of Mommsen's hanging ominously over me. I know my peril. I am aware that the greatest of Roman historians has demolished the Etruscan. So conscious am I of that fact, indeed, that I hardly even dare to have an opinion of my own against the ipse dixit of so mighty an authority. Respect for authority (in moderation) is so ingrained in my nature that only the mute appeal of those great dead Volumnii gazing up at me with dumb lips from their travertine urn-lids could induce me to vindicate the honor of their descendants against the cutting aspersions of the great living Teuton.

though not all can read the language of Dante), I shall set out by examining the influence of the Tuscan in modern art, and shall then work back to his influence in literature and science, as well as to the considerable part' he' played in the earlier development of antique Italy.

The best way to look at a big subject like this is perhaps to begin with the known and work back to the unknown. And since modern Tuscany is better known to us than ancient, and Tuscan' art is better known to us, for the most For when I say Etruscans, I mean part, than Tuscan literature (for all can' of course to include the entire Tus-read the language of Fra Angelico, can nationality in every stage of its chequered history. You have only to live a little time in Tuscany (by choice among the hills) in order to feel that the Etruscan is not somebody who once existed; he is the Florentine or Perugian or Sienese or Orvietan whom you meet every day in the square of the Signoria or on the Corso Vanucci. In modern times at least there can From beginning to end, whatever has be no doubt at all as to the artistic subeen most vital and most admirable in premacy of the Tuscan in the peninsula. Italy has proceeded, I believe, from And since this is a question of race and this ancient people whom Mommsen natural endowments, not a question of maligns, but who have nevertheless geography and political divisions of given us (amongst a noble army of country, I shall count here as Tuscans others) Dante, Petrarch, Macchiavelli, all persons belonging by birth or deBoccaccio; Fra Angelico, Botticelli, scent to the ancient Etruria, even Lionardo, Raphael; Donatello, Della though they may have happened to be Robbia, Verrochio, Michael Angelo. accidentally included by later distinc In one word, I maintain that for all tions of place or rule in Umbria, 'the practical purposes, when we talk of Romagna, or any later administrative Italian poetry, we mean Tuscan po-unity. Now, it is only necessary to

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