received a magnificent funeral in St. Paul's, the United
Provinces having in vain requested permission to inter him at their own
expense, with the promise that he should have as fair a tomb as any
prince in Christendom. Elizabeth always remembered him with affection
and regret. Cambridge and Oxford published three volumes of "_Lachrymae_"
on the melancholy event. Spenser in verse, and Camden in prose,
commemorated and deplored their friend and patron. A crowd of humbler
contemporaries pressed emulously forward to offer up their mite of
panegyric and lamentation; and it would be endless to enumerate the
poets and other writers of later times, who have celebrated in various
forms the name of Sidney. Foreigners of the highest distinction claimed
a share in the general sentiment. Du Plessis Mornay condoled with
Walsingham on the loss of his incomparable son-in-law in terms of the
deepest sorrow. Count Hohenlo passionately bewailed his friend and
fellow-soldier, to whose representations and intercessions he had
sacrificed his just indignation against the proceedings of Leicester.
Even the hard heart of Philip II. was touched by the untimely fate of
his godson, though slain in bearing arms against him.

We are told that on the next tilt-day after the last wife of the earl of
Leicester had borne him a son, Sidney appeared with a shield on which
was the word "_Speravi_" dashed through. This anecdote,--if indeed the
allusion of the motto be rightly explained, which it is difficult to
believe,--would serve to show how publicly he had been regarded, both by
himself and others, as the heir of his all-powerful uncle. The death of
this child, on which occasion adulatory verses were produced by the
university of Cambridge, restored Sidney, the year before his death, to
this brilliant expectancy; and it cannot reasonably be doubted, that the
academic honors paid to his memory were, like the court-mourning, a
homage to the power of the living rather than the virtues of the dead.
But though he should be judged to have owed to his connexion with a
royal favorite much of his contemporary celebrity, and even in some
measure his enduring fame, no candid estimator will suffer himself to
be hurried, under an idea of correcting the former partiality of
fortune, into the clear injustice of denying to this accomplished
character a just title to the esteem and admiration of posterity. On the
contrary, it will be considered, that the very circumsta