 indulging me, and laying down several letters, instantly re∣tired. A horrible transport for some mo∣ments benumbed me;—how multiplied, how complicate, how various, how new, were then my feelings! feelings which ever return with the remembrance! feel∣ings which opened a vein in my character as well as my heart—all sense of gentle∣ness vanished. The first paper I perused

confirmed my fears—I saw in the first lines the decided fate of the martyred Mary.— I seemed to behold the savage hand of Elizabeth, dipt in the blood of an anoint∣ed sister sovereign.—I felt she was my mother, my fond, my helpless mother, and my heart floated in tears, which were hours working their way up to my burn∣ing eyes. The furies of Orestes seemed to surround me, and thunder parricide, nothing but parricide, in my ear. What, groaned I, after so long an endurance, such complicated evils, supported with a patience that left not her enemies a pre∣tence for sacrificing her, that misery was reserved for her daughter? Perhaps even at the moment she laid that beauteous head, so many hearts were born to wor∣ship, on the block, every agony of death was doubled, by the knowledge her daughter brought her there.—Why did I not perish in the Recess by lightning? Why did not the ocean entomb me? Why, why, oh God, was I permitted to survive my innocence? In the wildness of my afflic∣tion, I cursed the hour, the fatal hour, when

I ventured beyond the bounds prescribed me. Yes love, love itself was annihilated, and (could I once have believed it) deep∣ly did I wish I had never seen Lord Lei∣cester. Passing from paper to paper, I saw friends and enemies unite in the eu∣logium of the Royal Martyr. What mag∣nanimity, what sweetness, what sanctitude did they assign to her—a bright example in the most awful of trials!—Subliming the idea of revenge inseparable from hu∣man nature, she centered it all in compa∣rison.—And what a comparison!—casting off the veil of her mortality, to darken over the future days of Elizabeth, the radiant track of her ascension concentered, while it dimmed the eyes of those sur∣rounding nations, who too late bewailed their shameful inactivity. Spirit of the Royal Mary! oh thou most injured! sighed out at last my exhausted soul, from that blessedness to which the wretch now levelled with the dust, perhaps too early translated thee, beam peace and pardon! Assuage the horrors of the involuntary sin, and oh, receive my life as its expia∣tion;

or a little, but a little,
