d, that I might
hear of her once in two or three days, my sorrows were the less; but
even now my heart is cast into the depth of all misery. I, that was
wont to behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking
like Venus, the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure cheeks
like a nymph, sometimes sitting in the shade like a goddess, sometimes
singing like an angel, sometimes playing like Orpheus. Behold the
sorrow of this world! Once a miss has bereaved me of all. Oh! glory,
that only shineth in misfortune, what is become of thy assurance? All
wounds have scars but that of fantasy: all affections their relentings
but that of womankind. Who is the judge of friendship but adversity? or
when is grace witnessed but in offences? There was no divinity but by
reason of compassion; for revenges are brutish and mortal. All those
times past, the loves, the sighs, the sorrows, the desires, cannot they
weigh down one frail misfortune? Cannot one drop of gall be his in so
great heaps of sweetness? I may then conclude, '_spes et fortuna
valete;_' she is gone in whom I trusted, and of me hath not one thought
of mercy, nor any respect of that which was. Do with me now, therefore,
what you list. I am more weary of life than they are desirous that I
should perish; which, if it had been for her, as it is by her, I had
been too happily born."

It is singular enough that such a letter should have been written, under
any circumstances, by a middle-aged courtier to an aged queen; but it
becomes far more remarkable and extraordinary when we know that the life of
Raleigh was not so much as threatened at the time when he wrote; and, so
far had either of the parties ever been from entertaining any such
affection the one for the other as could alone, according to modern ideas,
justify such fervor of language, that Elizabeth was at that time pining
with frustrated affection and vain remorse for the death of her beloved
Essex; a remorse which, in the end, broke a heart which had defied all
machinations of murdereous conspiracies, all menaces, all overtures of the
most powerful and martial princes to sway it from its stately and
impressive magnanimity; while Raleigh was possessed by the most perfect and
enduring affection to the almost perfect woman whom he held it his proudest
trophy to have wedded, and who justified his entire devotion by her love
un