the Queen, to whom the Countess revealed this on her
death bed, fell into despair over it. The ring is still shown, and
indeed several rings are shown as the true one: as also the tradition
itself is extant in two somewhat varying forms; attempts have been
made to get rid of the improbabilities of the first by fresh fictions
in the second.[292] They are both so late, and rest so completely on
hearsay, that they can no longer stand before historical criticism.

Nevertheless we cannot deny, as the reports in fact testify in several
places, that the remembrance of Essex weighed on the Queen's soul. It
must certainly have reminded her of him, that she was now brought back
exactly to the course he had insisted on, namely a friendly agreement
with the invincible Irish chief. She had allowed less imperious, more
compliant, declarations to reach Ireland. But was the man a traitor,
who had recommended a policy to which they had been forced to have
recourse after such repeated efforts? Had he deserved his fate at her
hands?[293] It was remarked that the anniversary of the day on which
Essex two years before had suffered on the scaffold, Ash Wednesday,
thrilled through her with heart-rending pain; the world seemed to her
desolate, since he was no longer there; she imputed his guilt to the
ambition, against which she had warned him, and which had misled him
into steps, from the consequences of which she could not protect him.
But had she not herself uttered the decisive word? She burst into
self-accusing tears. Her distress may have been increased by finding
that her statesmen no longer showed her the old devotion, the earlier
absolute obedience. When they, as we know, had framed a formal theory
for themselves, that they might act against an express command of the
Queen, on the assumption of her general intention being directed to
the public good, could the sharp-sighted, suspicious, sovereign fail
to perceive it? Could she fail to remark the agitation as to her
successor, which occupied all men's minds, while the reins were
slipping from her hands? The people, on whose devotion she had from
the first moment laid so much stress, and partly based her government,
seemed after Essex' death to have become cold towards her.

In every great life there comes a moment when the soul feels that it
no longer lives in the present world, and draws back from it.

Once more Elizabeth had the English Liturgy read in her room: there
she sat afte