While these events were in progress, and while his Sowship was making such an exhibition of himself, from day to day and from year to year, as is not often seen in any sty [pigsty], three remarkable deaths took place in England. The first was that of the Minister, Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, who was past sixty, and had never been strong, being deformed from his birth. He said at last that he had no wish to live; and no Minister [大臣] need have had, with his experience of the meanness and wickedness of those disgraceful times. The second was that of the Lady Arabella Stuart, who alarmed his Sowship mightily [very], by privately marrying William Seymour, son of Lord Beauchamp, who was a descendant of King Henry the Seventh, and who, his Sowship thought, might consequently increase and strengthen any claim she might one day set up to the throne. She was separated from her husband (who was put in the Tower) and thrust into a boat to be confined at Durham. She escaped in a man's dress to get away in a French ship from Gravesend to France, but unhappily missed her husband, who had escaped too, and was soon taken. She went raving [completely] mad in the miserable Tower, and died there after four years. The last, and the most important of these three deaths, was that of Prince Henry, the heir to the throne, in the nineteenth year of his age. He was a promising young prince, and greatly liked; a quiet, well-conducted youth, of whom two very good things are known: first, that his father was jealous of him; secondly, that he was the friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, languishing [受煎熬] through all those years in the Tower, and often said that no man but his father would keep such a bird in such a cage. On the occasion of the preparations for the marriage of his sister the Princess Elizabeth with a foreign prince (and an unhappy marriage it turned out), he came from Richmond, where he had been very ill, to greet his new brother-in-law, at the palace at Whitehall. There he played a great game at tennis, in his shirt, though it was very cold weather, and was seized with an alarming illness, and died within a fortnight of a putrid [very unpleasant] fever. For this young prince Sir Walter Raleigh wrote, in his * in the Tower, the beginning of a History of the World: a wonderful instance how little his Sowship could do to confine a great man's mind, however long he might im* his body.

And this mention of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had many faults, but who never showed so many merits as in trouble and adversity [逆境], may bring me at once to the end of his sad story. After an im*ment in the Tower of twelve long years, he proposed to resume those old sea voyages of his, and to go to South America in search of gold. His Sowship, divided between his wish to be on good terms with the Spaniards through whose territory Sir Walter must pass (he had long had an idea of marrying Prince Henry to a Spanish Princess), and his avaricious [greed] eagerness to get hold of the gold, did not know what to do. But, in the end, he set Sir Walter free, taking securities [抵押] for his return; and Sir Walter fitted out [配备] an expedition at his own coast and, on the twenty-eighth of March, one thousand six hundred and seventeen, sailed away in command of one of its ships, which he ominously [不祥地] called the Destiny. The expedition failed; the common men, not finding the gold they had expected, mutinied [叛变]; a quarrel broke out between Sir Walter and the Spaniards, who hated him for old successes of his against them; and he took and burnt a little town called Saint Thomas. For this he was denounced to his Sowship by the Spanish Ambassador as a pirate; and returning almost broken-hearted, with his hopes and fortunes shattered, his company of friends dispersed, and his brave son (who had been one of them) killed, he was taken - through the treachery of Sir Lewis Stukely, his near relation, a scoundrel and a Vice-Admiral - and was once again immured in his *-home of so many years.

successes of his against them... a friend of mine=one of my friends. 似乎狄大人的意思是他有n个success，其中m个against西班牙人，n>m>1, so n>2. :-)

His Sowship being mightily [very] disappointed in not getting any gold, Sir Walter Raleigh was tried as unfairly, and with as many lies and evasions [借口] as the judges and law officers and every other authority in Church and State habitually practised under such a King. After a great deal of prevarication [顾左右而言其它] on all parts but his own, it was declared that he must die under his former sentence, now fifteen years old. So, on the twenty-eighth of October, one thousand six hundred and eighteen, he was shut up in the Gate House at Westminster to pass his late night on earth, and there he took leave of [say goodbye to] his good and faithful lady who was worthy to have lived in better days. At eight o'clock next morning, after a cheerful breakfast, and a pipe [抽了一斗烟], and a cup of good wine, he was taken to Old Palace Yard in Westminster, where the scaffold [断头台] as set up, and where so many people of high degree were assembled to see him die, that it was a matter of some difficulty to get him through the crowd. He behaved most nobly, but if anything lay heavy on his mind, it was that Earl of Essex, whose head he had seen roll off; and he solemnly said that he had had no hand in bringing him to the block [放被砍的头的木块], and that he had shed tears for him when he died. As the morning was very cold, the Sheriff said, would he come down to a fire for a little space [time], and warm himself? But Sir Walter thanked him, and said no, he would rather it were done at once, for he was ill of fever and ague [打摆子], and in another quarter of an hour his shaking fit [发作] would come upon him if he were still alive, and his enemies might then suppose that he trembled for fear. With that, he kneeled and made a very beautiful and Christian prayer. Before he laid his head upon the block he felt the edge of the axe, and said, with a smile upon his face, that it was a sharp medicine, but would cure the worst disease. When he was bent down ready for death, he said to the executioner, finding that he hesitated, 'What dost [do] thou [you] fear? Strike, man!' So, the axe came down and struck his head off, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. 哦，我的上帝啊，这该死的幽默感。

六级/考研单词: exhibit, seldom, wicked, descend, throne, thrust, confine, wretched, princess, heir, jealous, cage, greet, fortnight, fever, jail, im*, merit, adverse, resume, voyage, territory, eager, expedition, march, sail, destiny, quarrel, saint, denounce, ambassador, pirate, shatter, disperse, disappoint, habitat, worthy, assemble, noble, solemn, shed, tremble, kneel, gorgeous, ax, medicare, cure, hesitate