g the feelings and conduct of Rawleigh at these solemn moments
of his life; to have preserved only the new would have been to mutilate
the statue, and to injure the whole by an imperfect view.

Rawleigh one morning was taken out of his bed, in a fit of fever, and
unexpectedly hurried, not to his trial, but to a sentence of death. The
story is well known.--Yet pleading with "a voice grown weak by sickness
and an ague he had at that instant on him," he used every means to avert
his fate: he did, therefore, value the life he could so easily part
with. His judges, there, at least, respected their state criminal, and
they addressed him in a tone far different from that which he had
fifteen years before listened to from Coke. Yelverton, the
attorney-general, said--"Sir Walter Rawleigh hath been as a star at
which the world have gazed; but stars may fall, nay, they must fall,
when they trouble the sphere where they abide." And the lord
chief-justice noticed Rawleigh's great work:--"I know that you have been
valiant and wise, and I doubt not but you retain both these virtues, for
now you shall have occasion to use them. Your book is an admirable work;
I would give you counsel, but I know you can apply unto yourself far
better than I am able to give you." But the judge ended with saying,
"execution is granted." It was stifling Rawleigh with roses! the heroic
sage felt as if listening to fame from the voice of death.

He declared that now being old, sickly, and in disgrace, and "certain
were he allowed to live, to go to it again, life was wearisome to him,
and all he entreated was to have leave to speak freely at his farewell,
to satisfy the world that he was ever loyal to the king, and a true
lover of the commonwealth; for this he would seal with his blood."

Rawleigh, on his return to his prison, while some were deploring his
fate, observed that "the world itself is but a larger prison, out of
which some are daily selected for execution."

That last night of his existence was occupied by writing what the
letter-writer calls "a remembrancer to be left with his lady, to
acquaint the world with his sentiments, should he be denied their
delivery from the scaffold, as he had been at the bar of the King's
Bench." His lady visited him that night, and amidst her tears acquainted
him that she had obtained the favour of disposing of his body; to which
he answered smiling, "It is well, Bess, that thou mayst dispose of that,
dead, thou