asked them to come
down to him. Arundel at once assented, and all the company at Carew's
left the balcony, and came on to the scaffold, where those who had been
intimate with Raleigh solemnly embraced him. He then began his
celebrated speech, of which he had left a brief draft signed in the Gate
House. There are extant several versions of this address, besides the
one he signed. In the excitement of the scene, he seems to have said
more, and to have put it more ingeniously, than in the solitude of the
previous night. His old love of publicity, of the open air, appeared in
the first sentence:

I thank God that He has sent me to die in the light, and not in
darkness. I likewise thank God that He has suffered me to die
before such an assembly of honourable witnesses, and not
obscurely in the Tower, where for the space of thirteen years
together I have been oppressed with many miseries. And I return
Him thanks, that my fever [the ague] hath not taken me at this
time, as I prayed to Him that it might not, that I might clear
myself of such accusations unjustly laid to my charge, and leave
behind me the testimony of a true heart both to my king and
country.

He was justly elated. He knew that his resources were exhausted, his
energies abated, and that pardon would now merely mean a relegation to
oblivion. He took his public execution with delight, as if it were a
martyrdom, and had the greatness of soul to perceive that nothing could
possibly commend his career and character to posterity so much as to
leave this mortal stage with a telling soliloquy. His powers were drawn
together to their height; his intellect, which had lately seemed to be
growing dim, had never flashed more brilliantly, and the biographer can
recall but one occasion in Raleigh's life, and that the morning of St.
Barnaby at Cadiz, when his bearing was of quite so gallant a
magnificence. As he stood on the scaffold in the cold morning air, he
foiled James and Philip at one thrust, and conquered the esteem of all
posterity. It is only now, after two centuries and a half, that history
is beginning to hint that there was not a little special pleading and
some excusable equivocation in this great apology which rang through
monarchical England like the blast of a clarion, and which echoed in
secret places till the oppressed rose up and claimed their liberty.

He spoke for about five-and-twenty minutes. His speech was exc