The Last Days of Mary Stuart. By Samuel Cowan. (Eveleigh
Nash. 12s. 6d.)—This volume, with the documents printed in it, the letters of Queen Mary, and the diary of her physician Burgoyne (covering the last six months of her life), is a contribution of importance to the literature _of its subject. Mr. Cowan holds that the Queen was entirely innocent of any complicity in the plots against Elizabeth. This is a thesis which it is scarcely worth while to discuss. He does not deny that she made over all her Royal rights to Philip ot Spain, whom she believed, or professed to believe, to be the most desirable Sovereign that the country—including, in Mary's view, England as well as Scotland—could have. Whether Mr. Cowan takes the same view of Philip's character we do not know. To us it seems that the attempt to put Great Britain into his hands was a capital offence.
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