“Join _Romeo_ with _Troy’s_ famous _Cressida_ if you wish to know my story. Cressida in this play with Juliet b----,” which, says the Editor,[2] “ends the cipher in _King John_ with an incomplete word. Turning to _Romeo and Juliet_ (p. 53), the remainder of the word and of the broken sentence is continued, being a part of the description of Marguerite, and the love Francis entertained for her.” This love never faded from his heart, although before he married, at the age of 47, he had, he says, hung up, as it were, the picture of his love on the walls of memory. We remember the calm and uneffusive fashion in which he then imparted to his friends the news that he had found “a handsome maiden who pleased him well.” The tones in which he bewailed his lost love are pitched in a different key. “It is sometimes said, _no man can be wise and love_, and yet it would be well to observe many will be wiser after a lesson such as wee long ago conn’d. There was noe ease to our sufferi’g heart til our yeares of life were eight lustres.[3] The faire face liveth ever in dreames, but in inner pleasances only doth th’ sunnie vision come. This will make clearlie seene why i’ the part a man doth play heerein and where-ere man’s love is evident, strength hath remained unto the end--the want’n Paris recov’ring by his latter venture much previouslie lost.” A second son was born to Elizabeth, and named Robert, after his father, the Earl of Leicester. Robert was “made ward” of Walter Devereaux, Earl of Essex, who “died” conveniently and unexpectedly, when Robert was old enough to succeed to his title and estates. At what period the brothers became aware of their kinship has not yet been told in the cipher. Francis describes the personal beauty, gallantry, and boldness of his brother, and says that for these qualities Robert was a great favorite with the Queen, who thought that he resembled herself. The tale is still incomplete; but enough has already been disclosed to give us a firm sketch of the miserable outline. We see Robert taking advantage of the Queen’s doting fondness for him, and Francis endeavoring to keep his ambition within bounds, and to smooth matters with his irascible mother when, as was often the case, she became irritated beyond endurance by his arrogant audacity. The aim of Essex was, not only in the future to supplant his elder brother, but even in the Queen’s lifetime to seize the crown, and rule as king. It is a dark and painful page in history, and the more we read the less we marvel at the efforts made by Elizabeth to destroy or garble the records of her own private life, and of the times in which she lived. Having spoilt and indulged Essex so long as she believed him devoted to herself, she turned upon him “in a tigerlike spirit” when his treachery became patent, and because Francis had spoken strongly on his brother’s behalf, and had endeavored to shield him from the wrath of the Queen, she punished