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commenced when Elizabeth was an infant nestling on her mother’s 
breast. Look, a little to the right of the dais; there stands the Queen’s 
prime minister, the younger Cecil, on whom, next to the Sovereign 
Ladye, every eye is bent, and to whom every knee sinks: secure of his 
present greatness during this reign, with its reversion equally so for the 
next, whose expectant rests on Cecil alone to obtain the throne, and 
when obtained to keep it—and Cecil did both. How observantly tran- 
quil is that keenly penetrating countenance! What may be the within 
of this splendid exterior, the hopeless envy of so many around? A 
weakly body, a wearied mind, a saddened spirit. Seek we his own esti- 
maté of the scene in which he figures only second? Walk into the 
Mausoleum he added to Hatfield Church as an earthly resting-place for 
himself and descendants; and you stand, as I have done, before his tomb, 
most probably executed in his life-time, a circumstance of frequent oc- 
currence later than his period.* 
Can we suppose that, as Cecil’s attention rested on the kneeling Coun- 
tess, the sight could fail awakening trains of thought and comparisons 
of difference? Her vital stamina, which had upheld its frame for a period 
doubling the allotted life of man, and who had passed her fourscore 
ere his parents were united in marriage, yet seemed at this moment 
more vigorous in health than he felt himselfto be. And great may 
have been the aiding placidity of her spirit, which, had it been other- 
wise tempered, would, as a rusty blade, long since have fretted 
through and destroyed its scabbard. Until the present, her troubies 
probably were limited to roguish tenants and marauding kerns; while 
his daily, never-ending labours, were to countermine Spanish aggression 
and domestic intrigue. 
But, whatever were the trains of thought raised by the appearance 
of the old Countess, the result was the same, an intense interest in her 
* When I visited the Church of Saint Martin’s, Stampford, where the great Lord 
Burghley and the elder branch of the Cecils are buried, the sexton directed my particular 
attention to the monument of “The Travelling Earl,” which my informant stated the 
earl himself had brought from Italy; and the “‘ History of Burghley House and Saint 
Martin’s Church” describes it as ‘‘a lofty and splendid Monument of white and veined 
marble, nearly thirty feet high, erected to the memory of John, fifth Earl of Exeter, and 
his Countess. It was executed by Monnot, the Italian sculptor, under the immediate di- 
rection of the earl himself.” On the monument is inscribed :— 
Petrus Stephanus Monnot 
fecit Rome MDCCIV.” 
But as the earl died in 1700, and the countess in 1703, the monument, though ordered 
by the earl, was not erected until after the death of the countess. 
It is an open altar-tomb, of white marble, the upper table supported by four female 
figures, representing Fortitude, Justice, Temperance, and Prudence. On this table, the 
head resting on a superb cushion, is the full-lengh, life-size effigy of the Right Honour- 
able Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, Lord High Treasurer to his Majesty, and Knight of 
the Most Noble Order of the Garter, in all the trappings of peerage, office, and knight- 
hood. Immediately below, on a table of black marble, is spread a coarse straw mat, the 
unrolled end forming a pillow, on which lies extended a skeleton—thus contrasting present 
humility and past grandeur, the pomp of life with the nothingness of the grave—morta- 
lity unclothed. 
