 and listened to a very imperfect and incoherent defence of his conduct. They parted friends; and Essex instantly giving way to that credulity, which so often made every talent art and nature could unite in his person, abortive, considered himself as effectually re-established in her heart, and indulged all the exultation such a triumph over his enemies could not fail to occasion.
What a thunder-stroke then was his immediate disgrace! a disgrace he could not but impute to his own imprudence; since in returning without advice, he had delivered himself voluntarily into the hands of his enemies. To the mortification of a long and humiliating imprisonment, was shortly after superadded a killing grief, in the supposed loss of the beauteous Ellinor.

Resigning himself to a sullen and silent despair, he no longer condescended to offer Elizabeth any further vindication of his conduct, nor could be persuaded to make the least submission. This concussion of feelings, however, shivered his animal, no less than his mental, system. A fever followed, which soon rose to a dangerous height. Obstinately rejecting all medical advice, he declared a thousand times he wished only to die; nor had that wish been vain, but that the Queen, unable wholly to subdue the sentiments of tenderness which had so long reigned in her heart, sent her own physician to attend him, with offers of peace and pardon. The desperate state in which he found the Earl, was faithfully reported to Elizabeth; who, touched to the heart, hesitated whether she should not revive him by an immediate visit; so hard will it always be to counteract by political manoeuvres the genuine impressions of nature. The Cecil party suddenly found themselves on the brink of ruin; and

every argument, fear, pride, or prudence, could suggest, was enforced to delay this interview. Elizabeth vielded to the powerful combination of reasons in that instance, but could not deny herself the pleasure of corresponding with Lord Essex as he grew better; and soon suffered him to vindicate his conduct: nay, even condescended to reproach him with the unknown lady who had so fatally influenced it. To this perplexing hint, he replied, his grief alone must answer; and the melancholy tenour of his life so exactly agreed with this declaration, that Elizabeth pressed no farther into a secret it was plain the grave now veiled: rather seeking by kindness to invigorate a mind ill-fortune had borne too hard upon.
It was now the shining time in the life of Essex. The purple torrent of successful war had hitherto swept away, or sunk those sweet humanities, those social virtues, time
