unhappy Queen, and it is a scene that has been described by too
many and too able writers for me to venture on a picture of it. But
the continually lamented death of Mary of Scotland seems to me
happy compared with the end of her greater and sterner rival. As I
think on the two, the vision of the black scaffold, the grim headsman,
the serene captive, and the weeping populace fades from me and is
replaced by a sadder vision: the vision of the dimly-lighted
state-bedroom of Whitehall. Elizabeth, haggard and wild-eyed has
flung herself prone upon the floor and refuses to take meat or drink,
but lies there, surrounded by ceremonious courtiers, but seeing with
that terrible insight that was her curse, that she was alone, that
their homage was a mockery, that they were waiting eagerly for her
death to crown their intrigues with her successor, that there was not
in the whole world a single being who cared for her: seeing all this,
and bearing it with the iron fortitude of her race, but underneath
that invincible silence the deep woman's nature crying out with a
bitter cry that she is loved no longer: thus gnawed by the fangs of a
dead vanity, haunted by the pale ghost of Essex, and helpless and
bitter of heart, the greatest of Englishwomen passed silently away.
Of a truth, there are prisons more gloomy than Fotheringay and deaths
more cruel than the axe. Is there no pity due to those who undergo
these?

It is surprising to read the series of form reports written on a boy
who at fifteen or sixteen could do work of this quality. Here are the
half-yearly reports made by his Form Masters from his first year in
the school at the age of thirteen to the time he left at the age of
eighteen.

_December 1887_. Too much for me: means well by me, I believe, but