w in the
imprisoned Mary of Scotland a sovereign, a saint, and a woman. But
friendship the most tender, if not the most sublime ever recorded,
prevailed among this band of self-devoted victims; and the Damon and
Pythias of antiquity were here out-numbered.

But these conspirators were surely more adapted for lovers than for
politicians. The most romantic incidents are interwoven in this dark
conspiracy. Some of the letters to Mary were conveyed by a secret
messenger, really in the pay of Walsingham; others were lodged in a
concealed place, covered by a loosened stone, in the wall of the queen's
prison. All were transcribed by Walsingham before they reached Mary.
Even the spies of that singular statesman were the companions or the
servants of the arch-conspirator Ballard; for the minister seems only to
have humoured his taste in assisting him through this extravagant plot.
Yet, as if a plot of so loose a texture was not quite perilous enough,
the extraordinary incident of a picture, representing the secret
conspirators in person, was probably considered as the highest stroke of
political intrigue! The accomplished Babington had portrayed the
conspirators, himself standing in the midst of them, that the imprisoned
queen might thus have some kind of personal acquaintance with them.
There was at least as much of chivalry as of Machiavelism in this
conspiracy. This very picture, before it was delivered to Mary, the
subtile Walsingham had copied, to exhibit to Elizabeth the faces of her
secret enemies. Houbraken, in his portrait of Walsingham, has introduced
in the vignette the incident of this picture being shown to Elizabeth; a
circumstance happily characteristic of the genius of this crafty and
vigilant statesman. Camden tells us that Babington had first inscribed
beneath the picture this verse:--

Hi mihi sunt comites, quos ipsa pericula ducunt.
These are my companions, whom the same dangers lead.

But as this verse was considered by some of less heated fancies as much
too open and intelligible, they put one more ambiguous:--

Quorsum haec alio properantibus?
What are these things to men hastening to another purpose?

This extraordinary collection of personages must have occasioned many
alarms to Elizabeth, at the approach of any stranger, till the
conspiracy was suffered to be sufficiently matured to be ended. Once she
perceived in her walks a conspirator; and on that occasion erected her