Excerpt from The Charming of Estercel Two old spells almost opposite in kind, one of love. The other of love and hate, are woven into this tale. Accord ing to the first, if a ring is put into a bird's nest in the spring-time and removed only when the young are ready to fly, it will be so impregnated with the spirit of love as to cast a charm on whoever wears it. According to the other, if a young girl uses the mirror of a wanton she inherits the spirit of guile left behind there. It is easy to see that these two beliefs are complementary of each other; being little allegories of substance by which we divine the powers of the gentle and ungentle influence. The character of Essex and the intrigues of the day have been studied from the state records of that extra ordinary time. Many curious things are to be found there; one can discover how apt are private passions, when swollen and inflated, to become affairs of state; we can find how an astute man, grown powerful, may use a whole kingdom as a weapon against his enemy: such is the story of Essex and Cecil. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.