Scott
hardly ever failed in painting kings or peasants, queens or
peasant-women. There was something in the well-marked type of both to
catch his imagination, which can always hit off the grander features
of royalty, and the homelier features of laborious humility. Is there
any sketch traced in lines of more sweeping grandeur and more
impressive force than the following of Mary Stuart's lucid interval of
remorse--lucid compared with her ordinary mood, though it was of a
remorse that was almost delirious--which breaks in upon her hour of
fascinating condescension?--
"'Are they not a lovely couple, my Fleming? and is it not
heart-rending to think that I must be their ruin?'
"'Not so,' said Roland Graeme, 'it is we, gracious sovereign,
who will be your deliverers.' '_Ex oribus parvulorum!_' said
the queen, looking upward; 'if it is by the mouth of these
children that heaven calls me to resume the stately thoughts
which become my birth and my rights, thou wilt grant them
thy protection, and to me the power of rewarding their
zeal.
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