r friendship." The philosopher was affected deeply and long by the
loss of her who had been his closest and best friend. He wrote, being
absent at the time, to one of her favorite maids, who was also a
friend of his own, "I infer your feelings from mine. I weep not; I
complain not; but I know not where to look for relief. The loss of
the queen appears to me like a dream; but when I awake from my
revery, I find it too true. Your misfortune is not greater than mine;
but your feelings are more lively, and you are nearer to the
calamity. This encourages me to write, begging you to moderate your
sorrow. It is not by excessive grief that we shall best honor the
memory of one of the most perfect princesses of the earth; but rather
by our admiration of her virtues. My letter is more philosophical
than my heart, and I am unable to follow my own counsel: it is,
notwithstanding, rational." Ascham relates, in his "Schoolmaster," a
conversation he once held with Lady Jane Grey. She said that the
sports of the gentlemen and ladies in the park were but a shadow of
pleasure compared with that which she found in reading Plato. And, in
explaining how she came to take such delight in learning, she said,
"One of the benefits that ever God gave me is that he sent so sharp
and severe parents, and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in
presence of either father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence,
sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry, or sad, be sewing, playing,
or dancing, or any thing else, I must do it, as it were, in such
weight, measure, and number, even so perfectly, as God made the
world; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened; yea,
presently sometimes, with pinches, nips, bobs, and other ways, which
I will not name, for the honor I bear them, so without measure
misordered that I think myself in hell, till time come that I must go
to Mr. Elmer, who teaches me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair
allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing while I am
with him." Elizabeth Robinson, afterwards the famous Mrs. Montague,
the attracting centre of a noted and memorable association of
friends, both men and women, had an exemplary friendship, full of
good offices and pleasure, and undisturbed by any thing until death,
with her preceptor, the distinguished scholar and writer, Conyers
Middleton. Hester Lynch Salusbury, at thirteen, formed a most
affectionate attachment to Dr. Collier, a guest of her f