Gallery, Regent Street, one of the most | Club) that he never missed attending interesting of the numerous relics of them from 1817 to 1831, when the fatal Mary Queen of Scots was a "gold or loss of health obliged him to seek for 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." 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 : "This key was found by some fishermen in their nets. Taken by them to the minister of Kinross, who gave it to Lord Leven. He sent it to Lady Harriet St. Clair for the purpose of having it sketched. She had a sketch made of it, which sketch is now at Dysart House." 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, the friend who had sent it to him was a sound antiquary, not likely to be imposed on himself, and sure not wilfully to impose on others. That that gentleman believed it to be the key. As to himself, Sir Walter added that he 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." A "curious aud ancient iron key, much corroded, measuring seven inches in length, and showing remains of inlaid brass and richly cut wards, with The hill, or height, where the queen rounded ornament on stem, and re- was believed to have landed on the mains of art-handle," stated to have lake shore obtained, it is supposed, in been found at Lochleven, was pre- memory of that event, the name of the sented 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- An additional bunch of eight keys,2 united by a brooch and flat hook-supposed, from their "unique" form and fine workmanship, to have been those of Queen Mary's wardrobes were also found in 1831, by a native of Kinross, in a "little sandy bay" The large and very elegant key in the family of Adam, of Blair-Adam, which was exhibited at Queen Mary's Tercentenary Exhibition at Peterborough, was given to the grandfather of the late Sir John Adam by Sir Walter Scott, who believed it to be the key of the apartments in Lochleven Castle, having received it from a most trust-north side of the islet known as the Worthy source. "Paddock Bower," less than three hundred yards to the eastward of the In the liber rarissimus of Blair-Adam 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-Adamburgh. on the 1 So called from the basket of fish sculptured on the top. 2 Now in the possession of the S. S. A., Edin 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. From the circumstance of the finding of the keys near to the north-west margin of the lake, and other corroborative evidence, Mr. Anuan, from whose interesting notes on the antiquities of Kinross-shire we have derived the greater part of our information, dismisses as iaprobable the "Mary Knowe" tradition. He strengthens his arguments by pointing out the fact that had Mary in the course of her adventurous voyage made that her goal, she must have passed a castellated edifice,1 belonging to, and then occupied by, the Douglases of Lochleven, which, had the poor queen attempted to do with her slender retinue, consisting of three persons, namely, Jane Kennedy, 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. 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 Châtellerault, at the head of fifty armed cavaliers of his name and lineage, and other loyalists of the neighborhood." Afterwards she was conducted by the devoted Lord Seton to his castle of West Niddrie, in Linlithgowshire, where, alas! amid joyful greetings and renewed homage, was enacted the "last bright scene" of Mary Stuart's sadly chequered existence. Here let 20 us leave her, exulting in her newly found freedom, once more a queen, 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." ELLEN E. GUTHRIE. * Mr. Annan, 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 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. prison house, its windows being only some nine 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 Dr. Karl Binz, professor of pharmacology at Bonn, gave an explanation which was little noticed at the time, but has now been signally confirmed by the discovery of the germ of malaria. He showed that quinine hydrochlorate, with neutral or slightly basic hinders many fermenting and putrescent processes. A. Laveran, the discoverer of the Plasmodium malaria, has demonstrated that this organism disappears from the blood of malaria patients after the administering of quinine, and that quinine, if permitted to act upon it directly, kills it. English Mechanic. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forvarded 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. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. 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 weary we grow in our watching the Yet the showers come back in their season; Though troubled the spirit within us, when Yet the sun cometh forth as a giant, and 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. 3 DAWN. AT every tick of time-when eve is grey, 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 or stay Moves the bright wizard on his lustral way white. Hamlet and homestead, or bleak mountain height, Or misty vale, each moment bringing day. O midnight watcher, woe-distraught and sick Of the blind heaven, whose very hopes do lour Like clouds upon thee palpable and thick, have power 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, Brought together by chances strange, Not in the sunshine, not in the rain, Not in the night of the stars untold, Or be as we were in the days of old. But as ships cross, and more cheerily go, To cleanse and calm and make thee cath- So I am richer by them, I know, olic. And they are not poorer, I trust, by me. From The National Review. BY the tombs of the Volumnii here, half-way along the white and dusty road from Perugia to Assisi, one truth, long half-perceived, is borne in upon me even more fully than ever,-how much and in how many connections when we speak of Italy we really mean Etruria; how completely all good things that have come out of the Italian soil or character are at bottom Etruscan. I write, of course, with the damning shadow of that famous chapter of Mommsen's hanging ominously over me. etry; when we talk of Italian literature, we mean Tuscan literature; when we talk of Italian art, we mean Tuscan art; when we talk of Italian greatness in any way (save only politically), we mean Tuscan greatness. Of course, in a general way, people have long since grasped this truth, in part at least; that is to say, they have recognized that in our modern world, from the tenth century onward, Tuscany has always taken the lead in 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 ancient or modern, is due to the Tuscan element 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 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 descend-And since modern Tuscany is better ants against the cutting aspersions of the great living Teuton. The best way to look at a big subject like this is perhaps to begin with the known and work back to the unknown. known to us than ancient, and Tuscan art is better known to us, for the most part, than Tuscan literature (for all can read the language of Fra Angelico, 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. In modern times at least there can For when I say Etruscans, I mean of course to include the entire Tuscan 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. 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 distincIn 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 |