for them. Forces are hurried up; and the English are attacked treacherously, in spite of solemn compacts; for 'No faith need be kept with heretics.' And woe to them if any be taken prisoners, even wrecked. The galleys, and the rack, and the stake, are their certain doom; for the Inquisition claims the bodies and souls of heretics all over the world, and thinks it sin to lose its own. A few years of such wrong raise questions in the sturdy English heart. What right have these Spaniards to the New World? The Pope's gift? Why, he gave it by the same authority by which he claims the whole world. The formula used when an Indian village is sacked is, that God gave the whole world to St. Peter, and that he has given it to his successors, and they the Indies to the King of Spain. To acknowledge that lie would be to acknowledge the very power by which the Pope claims a right to depose Queen Elizabeth, and give her dominions to whomsoever he will. A fico for bulls!

By possession, then? That may hold for Mexico, Peru, New Grenada, Paraguay, which have been colonized; though they were gained by means which make every one concerned in conquering them worthy of the gallows; and the right is only that of the thief to the purse whose owner he has murdered. But as for the rest-Why the Spaniard has not colonized, even explored, one-fifth of the New World, not even onefifth of the coast, Is the existence of a few petty factories, often hundreds of miles apart, at a few river mouths, to give them a claim to the whole intermediate coast, much less to the vast unknown tracts inside? We will try that. If they appeal to the sword, so be it. The men are treacherous robbers; we will indemnify ourselves for our losses, and God defend the right.

So argued the English; and so sprung up that

strange war of reprisals, in which, for eighteen years, it was held that there was no peace between England and Spain beyond the line: i.e., beyond the parallel of longitude where the Pope's gift of the western world was said to begin; and, as the quarrel thickened and neared, extended to the Azores, Canaries, and coasts of Africa, where English and Spaniards flew at each other as soon as seen, mutually and by common consent, as natural enemies, each invoking God in the battle with Antichrist.

Into such a world as this goes forth young Raleigh, his heart full of chivalrous worship for England's tutelary genius, his brain aflame with the true miracles of the new-found Hesperides, full of vague hopes, vast imaginations, and consciousness of enormous power. And yet he is no wayward dreamer, unfit for this workday world. With a vein of song 'most lofty, insolent, and passionate,' indeed unable to see aught without a poetic glow over the whole, he is eminently practical, contented to begin at the beginning, that he may end at the end; one who could work terribly, 'who always laboured at the matter in hand as if he were born only for that.' Accordingly, he sets to work faithfully and stoutly, to learn his trade of soldiering; and learns it in silence and obscurity. He shares (it seems) in the retreat at Moncontour, and is by at the death of Condé, and toils on for five years, marching and skirmishing, smoking the enemy out of mountain-caves in Languedoc, and all the wild work of war. During the San Bartholomew massacre we hear nothing of him; perhaps he took refuge with Sidney and others in Walsingham's house. No records of these years remain, save a few scattered reminiscences in his works, which mark the shrewd, observant eye of the future statesman. When he returned we know not. We trace him,

in 1576, by some verses prefixed to Gascoigne's satire, The Steele Glass,' solid, stately, epigrammatic, by Walter Rawely of the Middle Temple.' The style is his; spelling of names matters nought in days in which a man would spell his own name three different ways in one document. Gascoigne, like Raleigh, knew Lord Grey of Wilton, and most men about town, too, and had been a soldier abroad, like Raleigh, probably with him. It seems to have been the fashion for young idlers to lodge among the Templars; indeed, toward the end of the century, they had to be cleared out, as crowding the wigs and gowns too much, and perhaps proving noisy neighbours, as Raleigh may have done. To this period may be referred, probably, his justice done on Mr. Charles Chester (Ben Jonson's Carlo Buffone) a perpetual talker, and made a noise like a drum in a room; so one time, at a tavern, Raleigh beats him and seals up his mouth, his upper and nether beard, with hard wax.' For there is a great laugh in Raleigh's heart, a genial contempt of asses; and one that will make him enemies hereafter: perhaps shorten his days.

One hears of him next (but only by report) in the Netherlands, under Norris, where the nucleus of the English line (especially of its musquetry) was training. For Don John of Austria intends not only to crush the liberties and creed of the Flemings, but afterwards to marry the Queen of Scots, and conquer England; and Elizabeth, unwillingly and slowly, for she cannot stomach rebels, has sent men and money to The States, to stop Don John in time; which the valiant English and Scotch do on Lammas-day, 1578, and that in a fashion till then unseen in war. For coming up late and panting, and being more sensible of a little heat of the sun, than of any cold fear of death,' they throw off their armour and clothes, and, in their shirts (not over

VOL. I.

clean, one fears), give Don John's rashness such a rebuff, that two months more see that wild meteor, with lost hopes and tarnished fame, die down and vanish below the stormy horizon. In these days, probably, it is that he knew Colonel Bingham, a soldier of fortune, of a 'fancy high and wild, too desultory and overvoluble,' who had, among his hundred-and-one schemes, one for the plantation of America; as poor Sir Thomas Stukely (whom Raleigh must have known well), uncle of the traitor Lewis, had for the peopling of Florida. Raleigh returns: Ten years has he been learning his soldier's trade in silence. He will take a lesson in seamanship next. The court may come in time; for, by now, the poor squire's younger son must have discovered-perhaps even too fully-that he is not as other men are; that he can speak, and watch, and dare, and endure, as none around him can do. However, there are 'good adventures toward,' as the 'Morte d'Arthur' would say; and he will off with his halfbrother Humphrey Gilbert, to carry out his patent for planting Meta Incognita,- The Unknown Goal,' as Queen Elizabeth has named it,-which will prove to be too truly and fatally unknown. In a latitude south of England, and with an Italian summer, who can guess that the winter will out-freeze Russia itself? chant-seaman, like the statesman, had yet many a thing to learn. Instead of smiling at our forefathers' igno. rance, let us honour the men who bought knowledge for us their children at the price of lives nobler than our own.

The mer

So Raleigh goes on his voyage with Humphrey Gilbert, to carry out the patent for discovering and planting in Meta Incognita: but the voyage prospers not. A smart brush with the Spaniards' sends them home again, with the loss of Morgan, their best captain, and a tall ship,' and Meta Incognita is forgotten for

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a while but not the Spaniards. Who are these who forbid all English, by virtue of the Pope's bull, to cross the Atlantic? That must be settled hereafter; and Raleigh, ever busy, is off to Ireland, to command a company in that common-weal, or rather commonwoe,' as he calls it in a letter to Leicester. Two years and more pass here; and all the records of him which remain are of a man, valiant, daring, and yet prudent beyond his fellows. He hates his work and is not on too good terms with stern and sour, but brave and faithful Lord Grey: but Lord Grey is Leicester's friend, and Raleigh works patiently under him, like a sensible man, just because he is Leicester's friend. Some modern gentleman of note (I forget who, and do not care to recollect) says, that Raleigh'sprudence never bore any proportion to his genius.' The next biographer we open accuses him of being too calculating, cunning, time-serving; and so forth. Perhaps both are true. The man's was a character very likely to fall alternately into either sin,-doubtless, did so a hundred times. Perhaps both are false. The man's character was, on

occasion, certain to rise above both faults.

evidence that he did so his whole life long.

We have

He is tired of Ireland at last: nothing goes right there (when has it?), nothing is to be done there. That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. He comes to London, and to Court. But how? By spreading his cloak over a muddy place for Queen Elizabeth to step on? It is a pretty story: very likely to be a true one but biographers have slurred a few facts in their hurry to carry out their theory of 'favourites,' and to prove that Elizabeth took up Raleigh on the same grounds that the silliest boarding-school miss might have done. Not that I deny the cloak story, if true,

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