on him. Still Elizabeth waited and waited
in an agony of suspense, in hopes that the ring would come; the sending
of it would be so far an act of submission on his part as would put it
in her power to do the rest. Her love could bend her pride, indomitable
as it usually was, _almost_ to the whole concession, but it would not
give up quite all. It demanded some sacrifice on his part, which
sacrifice the sending of the ring would have rendered. The ring did not
come, nor any petition for mercy, and at length the fatal warrant was
signed.

What the courtiers said about Essex's desire to die was doubtless true.
Like every other person involved in irretrievable sufferings and
sorrows, he wanted to live, and he wanted to die. The two contradictory
desires shared dominion in his heart, sometimes struggling together in a
tumultuous conflict, and sometimes reigning in alternation, in calms
more terrible, in fact, than the tempests which preceded and followed
them.

At the appointed time the unhappy man was led out to the court-yard in
the Tower where the last scene was to be enacted. The lieutenant of the
Tower presided, dressed in a black velvet gown, over a suit of black
satin. The "scaffold" was a platform about twelve feet square and four
feet high, with a railing around it, and steps by which to ascend. The
block was in the center of it, covered, as well as the platform itself,
with black cloth. There were seats erected near for those who were
appointed to be present at the execution. Essex ascended the platform
with a firm step, and, surveying the solemn scene around him with
calmness and composure, he began to speak.

He asked the forgiveness of God, of the spectators present, and of the
queen, for the crimes for which he was about to suffer. He acknowledged
his guilt, and the justice of his condemnation. His mind seemed deeply
imbued with a sense of his accountability to God, and he expressed a
strong desire to be forgiven, for Christ's sake, for all the sins which
he had committed, which had been, he said, most numerous and aggravated
from his earliest years. He asked the spectators present to join him in
his devotions, and he then proceeded to offer a short prayer, in which
he implored pardon for his sins, and a long life and happy reign for the
queen. The prayer ended, all was ready. The executioner, according to
the strange custom on such occasions, then asked his pardon for the
violence which he was about to comm