had some private speech with her, which seemed to give him great contentment; for, coming from her Majesty to go shift himself in his chamber, he was very pleasant, and thanked God, though he had suffered much trouble and storms abroad, he found such a sweet calm at home." White, who was in the palace at the time, expresses surprise at Essex's boldness in thus making his way to her, "she not being ready, and he so full of dirt and mire, that his very face was full of it." He left her and returned in an hour, and was again graciously received. In the afternoon he again went up to the Queen; but then all was changed, "for she began to question him for his return, and his leaving all things at a great hazard." On the evening of the same day he was placed under arrest, and within a few days committed to the custody of the Lord Keeper. The Lord Lieutenant's flight from Ireland was followed by a cloud of the obscene birds of prey, fugitives from the devoted island. His sudden return from Ireland, says White, "brings all sorts of knights, captains, officers, and soldiers away from thence. The town is full of them. Most part of these gallants have quitted their commands, places, and companies, not willing to stay there after him, to the great discontentment of her Majesty. -The disorder seems to be greater than stands with the safety of that service." The offence was one which was not easily forgiven. Essex remained for eleven months a prisoner -for a considerable part of the time in the Lord Keeper's house, and afterward in his own. We have in Mr. Craik's book an account of the various efforts made in his favor by the members of his own family:-"My Lady of Essex is a most sorrowful creature for her husband's captivity; she wears all black, of the meanest price." She comes to the court all in black, "her dress not being altogether of the value of five pounds," and the Queen refuses to see her. A splendid New-year's gift is sent by her to Elizabeth; no answer is returned. Essex's mother tries the Queen's heart by a similar bribe-her "New-year's gift is very well taken." His sister, Lady Rich, writes letters to the Queen, and is rash enough to allow copies of the letters to be circulated. She is commanded to keep her house. He at last receives his liberty. All this is told in most interesting detail by Mr. Craik. There is a passage in Sir John Harrington's papers, which Mr. Craik has not adverted to, that would serve to prove that at the time Essex's conduct was attri buted to actual madness-and this, and this alone, would furnish an explanation of his subsequent course. Essex had entreated Harrington to express to Elizabeth his sorrow and contrition for the offences he had committed. "I thought," says Harrington, "that charitie should begin at home, and sail with a fair wind, às it was not likely to be a prosperous voyage. I had nearly been wrecked on the Essex coast, as I told the Queen. I had heard much on both sides, but the wiser he who repeateth nothing hereof. Did either know what I know either to have said, it would not work much to contentment or good liking. It resteth with me in opinion, that contrition thwarted in its career doth speedily lead on to madness. Herein I am strengthened by what I learn in my Lord of Essex, who shifteth from sorrow and repentance to rage and rebellion as suddenly as well proveth him devoid of good reason or right mind. In my last discourse [with him] he uttered strange words, bordering on such strange designs, that made me hasten forth and leave his presence. Thank heaven! I am safe at home; and if I go in such troubles again, I deserve the gallows for a meddling fool. His speeches of the Queen become no one who hath mens sana in corpore sano. He hath ill-advisers, and much evil hath sprung from this source. Queene well knoweth how to humble the haughty spirit-the haughty spirit knoweth not how to yield; and the man's soul seemeth tossed to and fro like the waves of a troubled The If Harrington wished to describe actual insanity, what stronger language could he use ? It is impossible to resolve his words into metaphor. He thought Essex mad; the return from Ireland could not be regarded as the act of a sane man; the wild purposes indicated in conversation were regarded by Harrington as outbursts of a disordered mind. It would have been well for Essex that the salutary restraint which deprived him of liberty had been longer continued. That restraint was removed at the close of August; and in the following February" he threw himself,” says Mr. Craik, "into the mouth of open-jawed destruction, by the most frantic attempt recorded in history." On Sunday, the 8th of February, he rushed, at the head of a few partisans-Blount, his stepfather, being of the number-through the city of London, shouting out "For the Queen, for the Queen!" The citizens did not know what to make of it: they thought Essex and she were at last friends, and that this strange scene was some proclamation enacted by her wish. The ob- | ject was an attack on the Queen's palace, with the intention, on his part, of becoming possessed of her person. The rebellion commenced and ended on the same day. Before a month was at an end Essex was tried and executed. Essex, when dying, seemed to be strongly under the influence of religion. His repentance of his treason seemed to be, and no doubt was, sincere; but the strange confessions he made, implicating in his treason persons of all ranks, and most opposite politics, could scarcely have been true. We believe We believe him to have been living, for three or four of the latter years of his life, under delusions of so strange a kind as though it would be impossible to contend that the insanity was such as not to leave him a responsible agent to deprive his testimony against others of any value whatever. He denied, and we believe with truth, that he had any design against the Queen's life. His own he thought in danger from the plots of some of the leading persons about the court; and to this fear he referred his attempt. His stepfather, Blount, who was executed a few days after Essex, describes himself as having dissuaded Essex from some wild plots a few years before, but denied all knowledge of the objects of the wild movement in which he yet participated. He was summoned, he said, by the Earl, to London, on matters connected with the Earl's property, the management of parts of which was in his hands. His request, that he should be executed by decapitation, was complied with, in recognition of the military rank he had borne, when he had served under Essex in Ireland. richest poetry in announcing the blessings The old countess lived to see her grandson, at the age of thirty-seven, again venture into the matrimonial noose, with scarcely a more prosperous event. But we cannot, at present, follow Mr. Craik through any further chapters of his romantic history. The old lady died on Christmas day, 1634. For the last forty-five years of her life she had lived at Drayton Basset. The old manor-house which he and the Countess "She and Blount seem to have taken up their Lettice Knollys survived her husband and residence here upon their marriage; and here her son for many a long year. She lived to she died forty-five years after. Drayton Basset, witness much of the eventful life of her grand-worth, had been in ancient times the domain of lying about a couple of miles to the south of Tamson, the third Earl of Essex, of the name of the Lords Basset, but had latterly fallen to the Devereux. In one of Rowland White's let- crown, by which a long lease of it had been grantters we find the marriage of that grandson ed in the reign of Henry the Eighth; this lease mentioned. He married the last Lady Fran- Leicester had acquired, and left, as appears by ces Howard, one of Lord Suffolk's daugh- his will, to his wife; and Sir Christopher Blount ters, to the great contentment of Lady Lei- is supposed to have afterward purchased the fee. cester. How little do men see the future! had inhabited, and in which she continued to reIt was scarce possible that a marriage should side throughout her third widowhood, was still have been celebrated under circumstances standing toward the end of the last century. more auspicious than those which augured There is a view of it in Shaw's Staffordshire from happiness to the boy of fourteen and the girl a sketch taken in 1791. The mansion, Shaw of thirteen, who then were giving themselves remarks, was at this time a curious specimen of away. The festivities at court, where the the occasional simplicity of our ancient nobility in marriage was held, were of unusual brilliancy. wood and plaster, with a rude old hall, hung It was principally of They are minutely described by Ben Jonson, round with portraits, stags' heads, &c.; and who, in a most elaborate, yet most graceful quadrangular, with several side staircases, like drama, The Masque of Hymen, lavished his an old college, and the rooms mostly small.' It their houses 372 THE HERMIT HEART. seems to have consisted only of a ground floor,, We have said little through this article of the delight which we have received from many parts of Mr. Craik's work. The style is, throughout, pure and unaffected-often rising into dignity, and always earnest and eloquent when sympathy is awakened by A. From the Athenæum. A CHILD'S GRAVE AT FLORENCE. A. A. E. C., BORN JULY, 1848; DIED NOVEMBER, 1849. BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. OF English blood-of Tuscan birth, What country should we give her? Instead of any on the earth, The civic heavens receive her. And here among the English tombs, Bright featured as the July sun Her little face still played in- So, LILY-from those July hours→→ She looked such kindship to the flowers- A Tuscan lily-only white; As Dante, in abhorrence Of red corruption, wished, aright, We could not wish her whiter:-her This July creature thought perhaps She sat upon her parents' laps, And mimicked the gnat's humming. Said "Father, Mother;"-then, left off- "Let little children come to me, And do not thou forbid them." So, unforbidding, have we met, And gently here have laid her; Though Winter is no time to get The flowers that should o'erspread her. We should bring pansies, quick with Spring, And also, above everything, White lilies for our LILY. Nay, more than flowers this grave exacts- Of her sweet eyes and pretty acts— With calm renunciations. Her very mother, with light feet, Saying "The angels have thee, sweet, But winter kills the orange-buds- Poor earth-poor heart!-too weak, too weak Poor heart!-what bitter words we speak- Sustain that heart in us that faints, Thou God, the Self-Existent ! We catch up wild at parting saints, To us-us also open straight!— Are we, too, like the earth, to wait O, my own baby on my knees, But God gives patience-Love learns strength: And Hope itself can smile at length On other hopes gone from us. Love, strong as Death, can conquer Death, Arms empty of her child she lifts- "Still mine-maternal rights serene Not given to another!" The crystal bars shine faint between "Meanwhile," the mother cries, "content! Its sweetness following where she went, "To us-the grave; to her-the rows, "For her to gladden in God's view; Grow, LILY, in thy garden new, "Grow fast in Heaven, sweet LILY clipped, "While none shall tell thee of our tears- "Child, father, mother-who, left out? "Some smiling angel close shall stand, From the North British Review. HUMBOLDT'S ASPECTS OF NATURE IN DIFFERENT LANDS. Aspects of Nature, in Different Lands and Different Climates, with Scientific Elucidations. By ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. Translated by MRS. SABINE. In 2 vols. 12mo. Pp. 650.* WHEN we contemplate the natural world in our own fatherland, as seen from different stations on its surface, and at different seasons of the revolving year, it presents to us but a single aspect, however diversified be its forms, and however varied its phenomena Like the race which occupies it, the scenery within each horizon has its family likeness, and the landscape from each spot its individual features, while the general picture of hill and dale, and heath and forest, have their similitude in the character and costume of the people. During the daily and annual revolutions of our globe, the sun sheds his varying lights and hues over the more permanent and solid forms of nature, and carries in his train those disturbing elements which give an interest to each passing hour, and invest the seasons with all the variety which characterizes them. The external world may thus lose for a while its normal aspect what is fixed may for an instant be displaced, and what is stable subverted; but amid all the new and returning conditions of the year, whether the god of day gives or withdraws his light-whether the firmament smiles in azure or frowns in gloom-whether the lightning plays in its summer gleams, or rages in its fiery course-whether vegetation dazzles with its youthful green, or charms with its tint of age, or droops under the hoary covering of winter-under all these expressive phases of its life, nature presents to us but one aspect characteristic of the latitude under which we live, and the climate to which we belong. The inhabitant of so limited a domain, even if he has surveyed it in all its relations, has no adequate idea of the new and striking aspects in which nature shows herself in other lands, and under other climates. Even *[The authorship of this erudite and instructive article may be safely assigned to Sir DAVID BREWSTER.-ED.] in the regions of civilization, where her forms have, to a certain extent, been modified by art, and her creations placed in contrast with those of man, she still wears a new aspect, often startling by its novelty, and overpowering by its grandeur. To the fur-clad dweller among ice and snow, the aspects of nature in the temperate and torrid zones must be signally pleasing. The rich and luxurious productions of a genial and fervid climate, and the gay coloring of its spring and its autumn, must form a striking contrast with the scanty supplies of a frozen soil, and the sober tints of a stunted vegetation; and the serf or the savage who has prostrated himself before a petty tyrant, in his hall of wood or of clay; or the worshiper who has knelt on the sea-shore, or offered incense in the cavern or in the bush, must stand appalled before the magnificent temples of Christian or of Pagan opulence, and amidst the "cloudcapped towers and gorgeous palaces of civilization. Nor is the aspect of the arctic zone less curious and interesting to the southern eye. On her regions of eternal snow, which the summer sun is unable even to thaw, the tracts of commerce and the footprints of travel are unseen. The shadow of man and of beast alone variegates the winding-sheet of vegetable life; mountains of fire, and plains of sulphur, stand in curious juxtaposition to precipices of ice and accumulations of snow, and from the glacier margin of the ocean are detached the gigantic icebergs, which, drifting to the southern seas, and raising only their heads above the waves, often threaten the tempest-driven mariner with destruction. To these singular aspects of arctic nature we may add one still more singular-the one long day of light, and the one long night of darkness, which alternately cheer and depress its short-lived and apparently miserable population. |