deeply sensible to the want, or her imagination to the charm, of loving
and being beloved. The death therefore of the man who had been for
thirty years the object of a tenderness which he had long repaid by
every flattering profession, every homage of gallantry, and every
manifestation of entire devotedness, left, notwithstanding any late
disgusts which she might have entertained, a void in her existence which
she felt it necessary to supply. It was this situation, doubtless, of
her feelings which led to the gradual conversion into a softer
sentiment, of that natural and innocent tenderness with which she had
hitherto regarded the brilliant and engaging qualities of her youthful
kinsman the earl of Essex;--a change which terminated so fatally to
both.

The enormous disproportion of ages gave to the new inclination of the
queen a stamp of dotage inconsistent with the reputation for good sense
and dignity of conduct which she had hitherto preserved. Nor did she
long receive from the indulgence of so untimely a sentiment any portion
of the felicity which she coveted. The careless and even affronting
behaviour in which Essex occasionally indulged himself, combined with
her own sagacity to admonish her that her fondness was unreturned; and
that nothing but the substantial benefits by which it declared itself
could have induced its object to meet it with even the semblance of
gratitude. As this mortifying conviction came home to her bosom, she
grew restless, irritable, and captious to excess; she watched all his
motions with a self-tormenting jealousy; she fed her own disquiet by
listening to the malicious informations of his enemies; and her heart at
length becoming callous by repeated exasperations, she began to visit
his delinquencies with an unrelenting sternness. This conduct, attempted
too late and persisted in too long, hurried Essex to his ruin, and ended
by inflicting upon herself the mortal agonies of an unavailing
repentance.

Lord Bacon relates, in his Apophthegms, that "a great officer about
court when my lord of Essex was first in trouble, and that he and those
that dealt for him would talk much of my lord's friends and of his
enemies, answered to one of them; 'I will tell you, I know but one
friend and one enemy my lord hath; and that one friend is the queen, and
that one enemy, is himself.'" But rather might both have been esteemed
his enemies; for what except the imprudent fondness of the queen, and
the e