Among those upon whom Elizabeth bestowed her smiles, was the handsome Earl of Essex. He was very popular, and was led by his vanity to engage in some treasonable schemes. He was tried, and condemned to be executed. He had a ring which the queen had given him in some moment of good humor, saying that if he was ever in trouble, he might send that ring to her, and she would protect him. Essex, when in prison, the day of execution drawing nigh, remembered his ring, and giving it to lady Nottingham, requested her to bear it to the queen. This lady Nottingham promised to do, but she deceived Essex, and kept the ring. He was therefore executed, and Elizabeth, who expected her favorite to appeal to her mercy, imagined, till after his death, that he was too proud to solicit it. At last the countess of Nottingham was seized with a violent distemper. She believed that it would prove fatal, and sending for the queen, unburdened her oppressed conscience by confessing the artifice of which she had been guilty. “I have not many hours to live,” continued she, “and I pray your majesty to smooth my pillow, by giving me your pardon!” The queen gazed at her for a few moments in silent horror. She then seized her by the shoulder, shook her violently, and cried, “God may pardon you, but I never can!” Elizabeth then burst from the chamber; but the shock proved too much for a declining constitution. She refused all food, lay on the floor day and night, and spoke only in groans and sighs and inarticulate words. She was then advised by the archbishop of Canterbury to fix her thoughts wholly upon God, and made answer that she did so. It was the last sentence which she uttered; for falling soon afterwards into a lethargic slumber, she expired without a groan, on the 24th of March, 1603, in the seventieth year of her age, and forty-fifth of her reign.
If Elizabeth governed her people well, she still exerted a bad influence in many respects. Great extravagance in dress was the prevailing foible of the day,—a foible in which the queen herself set the example; for she is stated to have left, at her decease, upwards of three thousand different robes, all of them fit for use, and all occasionally worn. This is the more remarkable, as during the preceding reign frugality seems to have been a characteristic of the age. In those days, the yearly rent of a mansion in London, fit for the occupation of a great officer of state, amounted to thirty shillings sterling money: the halls of the nobility, as well as the floors of the peasantry, were strewed with rushes; and even in considerable towns there were few houses to which a chimney was attached, the fires being kindled by the side of the wall, and the smoke permitted to escape as it best could, through the windows. In general, the people slept on straw pallets, and they used round logs of timber for pillows, and had almost all their utensils and furniture made of wood.
Peter Pilgrim’s Account of his Schoolmates. No. 1.
I sit at my desk to record my recollections of my school-fellows. Many years have now rolled away since those happy days of childhood, when we gathered daily at the old faded school-door to receive, each one, his little share of early instruction. Swiftly the years have passed away since that golden period of time, and as I now gaze with my dimmed vision through the dusty and cloudy glass of time upon those departed scenes, I find that many of them are blurred and indistinct in my memory—that many of them are well-nigh blotted out forever from my remembrance. Yet will I try to revive them from the dust and forgetfulness that time has cast over them, even as one carefully removes the dust that has gathered over an ancient picture, first bringing out to light one bright feature and then another, till at length the whole sweet face, in all its bloom and loveliness, is revealed to sight. The mind is much like an old lumber garret in some ancient country house. Dust, and cobwebs, and oblivion gather deeply upon its miscellaneous contents, and year after year continues to add to the mixed assemblage. Old books and old pictures, time-wrecked furniture, dismantled articles of husbandry, and crippled instruments of housewifery, cumber the place in admired confusion. Nothing is in its place, nothing can be found when sought for and most wanted. Everything lies hidden and forgotten, like the body of the sweet bride in the ballad, whose lost figure rested undiscovered in the old baronial garret, through so many long years after their living entombment. So the thoughts of youth are laid away in the chambers of the mind and the hidden nooks of the memory, there to rest, till haply some accidental association of after years brings them forth to light and life.
Sweet youth, happy childhood! the greenest spot of life, the only verdant oasis on the desert of life! We never enough prize thy happy-heartedness, thy warm affections, thy warm-springing feelings, until their freshness and bloom have departed. Truly it is an oasis in the desert—a spot all bright, and green, and blooming! As the oasis springs up with its verdurous bloom, and its spicy grove and palm-trees, lifting up their tufted branches to the heavens, and the clear-flowing fountain pouring its limpid tide with light laugh and merry song amid the sands of the waste, so does this happy period of life rise up and contrast itself with the whole period of this work-day existence. What are all the cankered cares that eat into the very heart in after life, to that season of sunshine? What the cares of riches and the toils of gain to the sauntering schoolboy? What the dark revolutions that convulse the world and overthrow empires, to him? What the rumors of lost navies and routed armies falling on his ear? They tell to his heart no sad tale; they leave on his mind no gloomy impression. He does not measure their magnitude or feel their reality. The loss of a toy, the fading of a favorite flower, would cause him more unhappiness; and even these regrets last but for a moment, and the smile chases the tear from his eyelid ere it can fall. What to him are ambition, and remorse, and avarice, and crime?—those demons that will start up around him in later life, and beguile his step, and strive to fill his mind with darkness. His ambition runs not beyond the present hour, and he is satisfied and happy if he can but lead in the boyish race, or bear away the prize in the youthful task. If he fails, he does not lay up the defeat in his heart, and brood and lament over it in useless sorrow. What is remorse to him who has done nought to darken his mind by day, or scare away slumber from his pillow at night? What is avarice to him who has never sighed for the “yellow gold,” or longed after untold wealth? He has a bright summer holiday for his own—and is he not wealthy? He can roam among the green pastures, lose himself in the deep, untravelled woods, ford the cool river, swim the clear lake, gather the brightest flowers that grow on hill and valley, and pluck the sweetest fruits and berries of the wild, with none to interrupt or question. Is he not more happy in the free enjoyment of these, his daily rambles and pleasures, than the anxious lord of all these acres? Does he not enjoy with all his soul the sweet airs, and green woods, and gay flowers of the spring, the shaded wood-paths of summer, the ripened fruits and fading glories of autumn, and the merry sports of winter, with all its sleighing-parties, skating frolics beneath the winter moon, and the building and battles of the snow-heaped fortress? All these are unalloyed delights, pouring into the youthful heart more true joy than any hard-sought and expensive pleasure of afterlife can ever afford.
Who can ever forget the joy that comes with the bright Saturday afternoon in the country? The whole school is freed from the thraldom of the bench and task, and each has to choose, among many delights, how to employ the golden hours. One little party decides for a game at ball: so the neat new bats are produced; the well-knit and high-bounding balls are got ready; the slender wickets are set up; the “sides” are carefully chosen, and each rival party labors as zealously for the victory as ever the invincible “old guard” and the gallant “Scotch Greys” toiled for the bloody prize on the deadly plain of Waterloo. Some decide for “a race;” and soon the ruddy cheeks glow with a ruddier bloom, as each panting combatant flings himself, exhausted, on the high-growing grass by the goal. Others content themselves with the more quiet allurements of the top, the kite, the hoop, and the marble. High soars the painted kite, far above the wood-tops and the village steeple, and round flies the giddy hoop till the child that guides it has not breath or strength to propel it further. And some get ready their fishing-gear, and sally forth to the neighboring brook or pond, properly accoutred with rod and basket. For many an hour do they continue to wade through the shallow streamlet; they flounder through the black swamp; they struggle through the tangled thicket, interlaced with all its twisted roots and running vines; they drop in their hooks at each well-known pool and eddy; and return home, when the twilight begins to gather dimly over the landscape, and the shadows of the old trees lengthen in the slanting sun, each one laden with his string of speckled or silvery prizes.
Our own inclination usually led us away with the angling party. It was then our chief and unalloyed pleasure, and served to sweeten many a tedious task, and many an hour of scholastic drudgery. If at any time we were degraded to the foot of the class, and our head disgraced with that vile badge, “the foolscap,” we could console ourself with the delightful reminiscences of the rod and line. If at any time the dominie’s rod visited upon our poor back the deficiencies of the head, that same head would be at work in pleasant thoughts of the long rod and the angle, and thereby console the afflicted body for the anguish it had caused it. If a neglected lesson occasioned a temporary imprisonment in a dark room, our fancy would beguile the dreary hours with the anticipated joy of the Saturday afternoon, and the brimming basket of glittering fish. But our reminiscences of those holidays are overcast by a gloomy cloud, which will throw a shadow over many years to come, as it has done on many an hour that is past and gone. The thought of the painful accident we now record, will often obtrude itself upon the mind when its presence is least welcome.
Charley, our earliest friend, was a noble, light-spirited little fellow, with a thousand good qualities, and few bad ones. He seemed to master the most difficult task as if by intuition, and while we were slowly bungling over its first paragraph, he would run it nimbly through to the end, and then lend a helping hand to extricate his friend from the quagmires of learning. He was a sort of admirable Chrichton, and gained and maintained the lead in all things. He was not only the best scholar, but also the staunchest champion, the fleetest runner, and the most adroit angler in the school. Somehow or other, he seemed to exert a charmed influence over the prey, for they would at times leap at his hook with avidity, while they turned up their honorable noses at our own, as if they scorned to perish by any other band than his.
One bright, Saturday afternoon in summer, we were together, as usual, employed at the “angler’s quiet trade,” at the border of a broad and deep river in the neighborhood, regardless of all things but the glorious nibbles which were constantly twitching the buoys of our lines beneath the surface. The prey was uncommonly plenty, and we prolonged our sport hour after hour, till at length the evening shadows, that crept over the waves, admonished us to depart homeward. We were on the point of leaving, when, to my unutterable agony, I heard a heart-rending cry, a plunge into the water, and poor Charley was lost to me forever! The water was deep and rough, there was no help at hand, and neither of us could swim. The agony of terror condensed into that little moment cannot be conceived. It seemed as if, were the sum of a whole life of wretchedness united in one instant, it could not have occasioned more intense torment than I then felt. I gazed on the darkened and turbulent waters as they rolled along, and saw the supplicating agony of his upcast look, and the convulsive motion of his limbs as he struggled with the treacherous element, and, without considering the consequences of the act, I plunged in, in the vain attempt to seize the arm that was slowly sinking away from my sight; but it eluded my eager hand, and his cry for help was choked by the angry waters forever. I had retained my grasp on the low timbers on which we had stood, and to this alone owed my own preservation. I immediately raised the alarm, and search was speedily made with the light of lanterns, but the lost body of poor Charley continued to slumber that night in the waters. On the morrow it was discovered and conveyed away to its last habitation, followed by a train of sorrowing schoolmates, but none walked by the little coffin with so heavy a heart as myself.
But before I attempt any further description of the scholars and their adventures, our good old teacher merits a brief notice. Methinks I can still see his kind, affectionate face, and hear his mild voice again, though the narrow house has long ago shut its iron door upon his mortal remains. He was the perfection of human kindness and gentleness, with a nature far too lenient and forbearing to rule the wild spirits of a village school. He was a deep and thoroughly read scholar, but, unfortunately, did not possess the tact to impart his learning to his pupils. But the fault, after all, rather lay with them, for if one desired to profit by his instructions, few persons had a more extensive storehouse of lore from which to communicate to others. He was an able classical scholar, and was well versed in many modern languages. But most of his pupils cared more for their amusements than for the sweet waters of learning, and were too full of mischief to attend to his teachings. He was much too gentle to apply the rod liberally, and we stood but little in awe of his presence. During school hours, he would often become completely lost in his abstruse studies, to the utter forgetfulness of the madcaps who were contriving all manner of mischief around him. Many carried little bows and arrows to the schoolroom, and the little shafts of mimic warfare would sometimes fly in volleys over his very head, without even disturbing his cogitations. Marbles would be rolled across the floor, and papers of gunpowder would be cast into the fireplace, whose explosion would scatter ashes, and fire, and smoke around. The authors of these transgressions he seldom discovered, so that they continued to carry on their idle pranks with impunity. It was no uncommon matter for us to obtain leave from him for a short absence, and then to hurry off with our fishing-gear for a day’s sport, and no notice would he take of the absent delinquents.