[Illustration: _Entrance to the Bloody Tower and Steps leading to Raleigh’s Walk_] The end being now so certain and so near, the bright courage of the man returned; there was no shrinking with the closing scene so close at hand. He was not brought back to the Tower after his condemnation, and he passed his last night upon earth in the Gate House at Westminster, close to which the scaffold stood in Old Palace Yard. He had a last parting that evening with his devoted wife, his “dear Bess,” but neither dared to speak of their only remaining son—that would have been too bitter a pang for them to bear. Sir Walter’s last words to his wife were full of hope and courage: “It is well, dear Bess,” he said, referring to Lady Raleigh having been promised his body next day, the only mercy allowed her by the Council, “that thou mayest dispose of that dead which thou hadst not always the disposing of when alive.” Then she left him. During the long hours of that last night, he composed those beautiful lines which will last as long as the language in which they are written: “Even such is time! who takes in trust Our youth, our joys, and all we have, And pays us but with earth and dust: Who in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days. But from that earth, that grave, that dust, The Lord shall raise me up I trust.” Raleigh wrote these lines in a Bible which he had brought with him from the Tower. Carlyle has summed up Raleigh’s life and death in the following pregnant lines, in his “Historical Sketches”:— “On the morning of the 29th of October 1618 in Palace Yard, a cold morning, equivalent to our 8th of November, behold Sir Walter Raleigh, a tall gray-headed man of sixty-five gone. He has been in far countries, seen the El Dorado, penetrated into the fabulous dragon-realms of the West, hanged Spaniards in Ireland, rifled Spaniards in Orinoco—for forty years in quest a most busy man; has appeared in many characters; this is his last appearance on any stage. Probably as brave a soul as lives in England;—he has come here to die by the headman’s axe. What crime? Alas, he has been unfortunate: become an eyesore to the Spanish, and did not discover El Dorado mine. Since Winchester, when John Gibb came galloping (with a reprieve), he has been lain thirteen years in the Tower; the travails of that strong heart have been many. Poor Raleigh, toiling, travelling always: in Court drawing-rooms, on the hot shore of Guiana, with gold and promotions in his fancy, with suicide, death, and despair in clear sight of him; toiling till his brain is broken (his own expression) and his heart is broken: here stands he at last; after many travails it has come to this with him.”