GONE TO DEATH.

From The Earl of Essex.'

Queen. Is he then gone?-To death? Essex to death! And by my order?-now perhaps this moment!Haste, Nottingham, dispatch

Nottingham. What would your majesty!

Queen. I know not what-I am in horrors, Nottingham. In horrors worse than death!-Does he still live? Run, bring me word-yet stay-can you not save him Without my bidding? Read it in my heartIn my distraction read-O, sure the hand That saved him would be as a blest angel's Pouring soft balm into my rankling breast—

Nottingham. If it shall please your majesty to give Express commands, I shall obey them straightThe world will think it strange.-But you are queen. Queen. Hard-hearted Nottingham! to arm my pride,

Enter RUTLAND, wife of Essex.

My shame, against my mercy.-Ha! what's here!
A sight to strike resentment dead, and rouse
Soft pity even in a barbarous breast-

It is the wife of Essex!

Rise, Rutland, come to thy repentant mistress :
See, thy queen bends to take thee to her bosom
And foster thee for ever!-Rise.

Rutland. Which way?

Do you not see these circling steeps?—

Not all the fathom lines that have been loosed
To sound the bottom of the faithless main
Could reach to draw me hence. Never was dug
A grave so deep as mine!--Help me, kind friend,
Help me to put these little bones together-
These are my messengers to yonder world,

To seek for some kind hand to drop me down
A little charity.

Rutland. These were an infant's bones-But hush

don't tell

Don't tell the queen

An unborn infant's-may be, if 't is known,

They'll say I murdered it-Indeed I did not

It was the axe-how strange soe'er 't is true!

Help me to put them right, and then they 'll fly—
For they are light, and not like mine, incumbered
With limbs of marble, and a heart of lead.

Queen. Alas! her reason is disturbed; her eyes
Are wild and absent-Do you know me, Rutland?
Do you not know your queen?

Rutland. O yes, the queen!

They say you have the power of life and death-Poor queen!

They flatter you.-You can take life away,

But can you give it back? No, no, poor queen!-
Look at these eyes-they are a widow's eyes-
Do you know that?-Perhaps, indeed, you'll say,
A widow's eyes should weep, and mine are dry:

That's not my fault; tears should come from the heart,
And mine is dead-I feel it cold within me,
Cold as a stone.-But yet my brain is hot-
O fye upon this head, it is stark naught!
Beseech your majesty to cut it off,

The bloody axe is ready-say the word,

(For none can cut off heads without your leave)
And it is done-I humbly thank your highness
You look a kind consent. I'll but just in,
And say a prayer or two.

From my youth upwards I still said my prayers
Before I slept, and this is my last sleep.

Indeed 't is not through fear, nor to gain time—
Not your own soldier could meet death more bravely;
You shall be judge yourself.-We must make haste;
I pray, be ready.-If we lose no time

I shall o'ertake and join him on the way.

Queen. Follow her close, allure her to some chamber

Of privacy; there soothe her frenzy, but

Take care she go not forth. Heaven grant I may not
Require such aid myself! for sure I feel
A strange commotion here.

Enter an Officer.

Officer. May it please your majesty,
The Earl, as he addressed him to the block,
Requested but the time to write these lines;
And earnestly conjured me to deliver them

Into your royal hands.

Queen. Quick.-What is here!-Just heaven!
Fly, take this signet,

Stop execution-fly with eagle's wings-
What art thou? Of this world?

Nottingham. Ha! I'm discovered

Then be it so.-Your majesty may spare

Queen. Stop, stop her yell!-Hence to some dungeon, hence

Deep sunk from day! In horrid silence there
Let conscience talk to thce, infix its stings;
Awake remorse and desperate penitence,
And from the torments of thy conscious guilt
May hell be all thy refuge!

Enter CECIL, RALEIGH, &c.

Cecil. Gracious madam,

I grieve to say your order came too late;
We met the messenger on our return
From seeing the Earl fall.

Queen. O fatal sound

Ye bloody pair! accursed be your ambition,
For it was cruel.-

O Rutland, sister, daughter, fair forlorn!
No more thy queen, or mistress, here I vow
To be for ever wedded to thy griefs-

A faithful partner, numbering sigh for sigh,
And tear for tear; till our sad pilgrimage
Shall bear us where our Essex now looks down
With pity on a toiling world, and sees
What trains of real wretchedness await
The dream of power and emptiness of state.

STOPFORD AUGUSTUS BROOKE.

(1832)

STOPFORD A. BROOKE, the famous preacher, poet, and interpreter of English literature, was born at Letterkenny, County Donegal, in 1832. He was educated at Kidderminster, Kingstown, and Trinity College, Dublin. He was ordained in 1857, and was for some time chaplain to the British Embassy at Berlin. He held various preferments in the Church of England up to 1880, but he left it for the Unitarian body in that year. His books are numerous; among the more purely literary may be mentioned the 'Life of the Late Frederick D. Robertson,' Riquet of the Tuft,''Poems,' and the various studies of literature which have made him so widely known as a teacher of light and leading. His volumes of sermons enjoy a wide circulation. His 'Primer of English Literature' is the standard book on its subject. He has edited in conjunction with T. W. Rolleston, his son-in-law, 'A Treasury of Irish Poetry,' published by Messrs. Smith & Elder, which may be taken as a final judgment of its subject. In 1899 he succeeded Sir Charles Gavan Duffy as President of the Irish Literary Society.

FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON.

FromLife and Letters of F. W. Robertson.'

So lived and so died, leaving behind him a great legacy of thought, a noble gentleman, a Christian minister. To the tenderness of a true woman he joined the strong will and the undaunted courage of a true man. With an intellect at home in all the intricacies of modern thought, he combined the simple spirit of a faithful follower of Christ. To daring speculation he united severe and practical labor among men. Living above the world, he did his work in the world. Ardently pursuing after liberty of thought, he never forgot the wise reticence of English conservatism. He preserved, amid a fashionable town, the old virtues of chivalry. In a very lonely and much-tried life he was never false or fearful. Dowered with great gifts of intellect, he was always humble; dowered with those gifts of the heart which are peculiarly perilous to their possessor, he never became their slave. He lived troubled on every side, yet not distressed: perplexed, but not in despair: persecuted, but not forsaken: cast down, but not

destroyed: always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in his body. He died, giving up his spirit with his last words, in faith and resignation to his Father.

He lies in a hollow of the Downs he loved so well. The sound of the sea may be heard there in the distance; and, standing by his grave, it seems a fair and fitting requiem; for if its inquietude was the image of his outward life, its central calm is the image of his deep peace of activity in God. He sleeps well; and we, who are left alone with our love and his great result of work, cannot but rejoice that he has entered on his Father's rest.

There were united around his tomb, by a common sorrow and a common love, Jews, Unitarians, Roman Catholics, Quakers, and Churchmen; the workingmen, the tradesmen, and the rank and wealth of Brighton. For onceand it was a touching testimony to the reality of his workall classes and all sects merged their differences in one deep feeling.

It may be asked whether the truest idea of what he was can be gathered from his Letters or from his Sermons. The best reply is, that the Sermons picture what he strove to be, what he was when he felt and acted best, what he would have been had his life been less vexed, his heart less fiery, and his brain less attacked by disease. Of the Letters, some represent him in his happiest and most intellectual moments; others in times of physical weariness, when both intellect and heart were pained with trouble. and beset with questions too hard for him to solve completely; and a few, as those written from the Tyrol, when his whole being was convulsed in the crisis of a great religious change. They relate his inward trials; his sermons bear witness to his contest and his victory. Only when both are read and balanced one against the other, can an adequate idea be formed of what he was. On account of the overstrained self-depreciation which sometimes possessed him, especially after the intellectual excitement of Sunday, it is not possible to take his own estimation of himself in his letters as representing the whole truth.

No man ought to be judged by a record of his own inner life, no man ought to be judged entirely out of his own mouth. Far from being too lenient, men of Mr. Robert