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 “lion port,” reprimanding her captain of the guards, loud enough to meet the conspirator’s ear, that “he had not a man in his company who wore a sword.”—­“Am not I fairly guarded?” exclaimed Elizabeth.

It is in the progress of the trial that the history and the feelings of these wondrous youths appear.  In those times, when the government of the country yet felt itself unsettled, and mercy did not sit in the judgment-seat, even one of the judges could not refrain from being affected at the presence of so gallant a band as the prisoners at the bar:  “Oh, Ballard, Ballard!” the judge exclaimed, “what hast thou done?  A sort (a company) of brave youths, otherwise endued with good gifts, by thy inducement hast thou brought to their utter destruction and confusion.”  The Jesuit himself commands our respect, although we refuse him our esteem; for he felt some compunction at the tragical executions which were to follow, and “wished all the blame might rest on him, could the shedding of his blood be the saving of Babington’s life!”

When this romantic band of friends were called on for their defence, the most pathetic instances of domestic affection appeared.  One had engaged in this plot solely to try to save his friend, for he had no hopes of it, nor any wish for its success; he had observed to his friend, that the “haughty and ambitious mind of Anthony Babington would be the destruction of himself and his friends;” nevertheless he was willing to die with them!  Another, to withdraw if possible one of those noble youths from the conspiracy, although he had broken up housekeeping, said, to employ his own language, “I called back my servants again together, and began to keep house again more freshly than ever I did, only because I was weary to see Tom Salusbury’s straggling, and willing to keep him about home.”  Having attempted to secrete his friend, this gentleman observed, “I am condemned, because I suffered Salusbury to escape, when I knew he was one of the conspirators.  My case is hard and lamentable; either to betray my friend, whom I love as myself, and to discover Tom Salusbury, the best man in my country, of whom I only made choice, or else to break my allegiance to my sovereign, and to undo myself and my posterity for ever.”  Whatever the political casuist may determine on this case, the social being carries his own manual in the heart.  The principle of the greatest of republics was to suffer nothing to exist