 would never sollicit her to exert.—She regretted, too late, having driven him to so dangerous an extreme, and while his fate was yet uncertain, suffered more, perhaps, than he did in its completion.
The friends of the Earl, persuaded no kind of influence would be spared to bring him to the block, were unanimous in intreating him to win over the Queen by an early repentance, and submission: but they knew not the grandeur of the heart they would have humbled.—Born to distinguish himself most eminently when outward distinctions were withdrawn, it was then only Essex seemed to use his better judgment. "Can any one call himself my friend, would he indignantly exclaim, and yet wish me poorly to petition for an obscure, an ignominious life? What! to pine away the flower of manhood in infamy and solitude! shunned by all, yet unstigmatized by public justice,

and shunning, in turn, the exalted characters I dare no longer emulate.—Shut up with those tormenting companions, my own thoughts, till led, perhaps, by desperation, to inflict that fate upon myself, I have meanly evaded receiving from the law.—No, my friends, I am enthralled here as a traitor—if proved one, it is fit I expiate my crime; and if acquitted, I know the value of a life ventured hitherto only for my country."—Neither arguments, or intreaties, could shake his resolution; and he heard with unequalled firmness, that public sentence, from which, he still persisted, there was no appeal. In vain every dear and affecting image was pourtrayed in the strongest colours before his active imagination.—From that of the woe-struck Ellinor, liberated too late, and weaving in a distant solitude a thousand fairy bowers for love and happiness to dwell in—from her alone his nature shrunk. "You may wound my heart, would he sighing say, through every vein; but my reason is still inflexible, nor is even that sweet

creature an argument for my submitting to disgrace.—No! when I raised my eyes to thee, dear Ellinor, my conscious soul beheld in itself all that could intitle me to mate with thee.—I cannot resolve to look up even to the woman I adore.—Better she should weep me dead, than secretly despise me while yet existing.—Pure and precious will be the tears that fall upon my grave, but never could I behold one which would not secretly reproach me.—Leave me, my friends, to my fate; honor has hitherto been the invariable rule of my conduct, nor can I now adopt another.
