ADMIRAL GILBERT.

SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT, one of that bold band of English mariners, who threw such lustre on the reign of Elizabeth, was a native of Devonshire, and half-brother to Sir Walter Raleigh. He was born in 1539. He was educated at Eton, and for a short time studied at Oxford: he was also entered at the Temple. The intellectual training which Gilbert thus received in early youth, bore ample fruit during the active scenes in which the rest of his life was past. For he, like his illustrious kinsman, and most of the other Elizabethan heroes, combined the various glories of the scholar, the orator, the author, the sailor and the soldier, and the statesman. Being introduced at court by an aunt who was in the Queen's service, young Gilbert was easily led to forsake the legal for a military career; and he soon distinguished himself in the expedition to Havre, which took place in 1563, and also on other occasions. He was intrusted, while quite a young man, with the arduous and responsible duty of quelling Fitzmorris's rebellion in Ireland; and so ably did he conduct himself there, that he rose to be Commander-in-chief and Governor of the Province of Munster; and received the honour of knighthood from the Lord Deputy, Sir Henry Sidney, on New-Year's day, 1570. On his return to England he married a lady of large fortune, and in 1571 was returned to the House of Commons a member for Plymouth. He distinguished himself by the force and grace of his oratory in the English Parliament, as he had previously done in the Irish House of Commons, in which he had held a seat during his Munster command. He was employed in active service in the Netherlands in 1572; and, on his return, he diligently applied his mind to the question of the existence of a north-west passage round America; a problem which has never ceased to occupy the adventurous spirits of this country. He published, in 1576, his "Discourse to prove a passage by the north-west to Cathaia and the East Indies." This treatise is preserved in Hakluyt's old collection of voyages, and it well deserves perusal. It shows its author to have been a man of great learning and information, and a good logician, though more happy in opposing the theories of others than in supporting his own. Some of the reasons which he gives to prove "what

commodities would ensue, this passage once discovered," are worth quotation, for the light which they throw on the state of England at the time, and the proof they give of the antiquity of the prescription of emigration, as a panacea for the nation's ills. Gilbert says: "Also we might inhabite some part of those countryes, and settle there such needy people of our countrey, which now trouble the common wealth, and through want here at home, are enforced to commit outrageous offences, whereby they are dayly consumed with the gallows." "Also

here we shall increase both our ships and mariners without burdening the state, and also have occasion to set poore men's children to learn handicraftes, and thereby to make trifles and such like, which the Indians and those people do so much esteeme; by reason whereof there should be none occasion to have our countrey combred with loiterers, vagabonds, and such like idle persons." Gilbert professes his readiness to offer himself to bring these things into effect; and to prove that he has laboured to make himself sufficient for the enterprise, he alludes to some scientific improvements which he had devised in the mariner's card, and in the instrument for determining the longitude; and his concluding words worthily express the heroism which all the actions of his life attested. "Give me leave without offence always to live and die in this mind, that he is not worthy to live at all, that for feare or danger of death shunneth his countrey's service, and his owne honour seeing death is inevitable, and the fame of vertue immortall. Wherefore in this behalf, 'Mutare vel timere sperno.""

Two years after the publication of this treatise, Sir Humphrey obtained a most ample patent from the Crown, authorising him to occupy and colonise any parts of the North American continent that were not already in the possession of any of the Queen's allies. This was the first scheme of British colonisation in America. Sir Humphrey sailed forth, not as a mere explorer and transient visitor of new regions, but as the permanent occupant and future ruler of a new world. The right of an English Queen to assume as her own, and to deal with as her own, all such lands beyond the pale of Christendom as might be discovered in her name, was implicitly believed in by the English of that age. And Queen Elizabeth had granted to Gilbert as his own for ever all such "heathen and barbarous countries as he might discover," with absolute authority there both by sea and land. The sole reser

vations in favour of the English Crown were, that he and his successors should do homage to Elizabeth and her successors, and that they should render a tribute of the fifth part of all gold and silver that the new regions might produce. Gilbert, accompanied by Raleigh,' sailed at once for the New World with a small squadron, but was soon driven back by stress of weather to England with the loss of one of his best ships. Undismayed by this repulse, Sir Humphrey sailed again in 1583, and reaching Newfoundland in the month of August in that year, he took formal possession of the territory round the harbour of St. John's." He granted several leases of land in his projected colony to the adventurers who were with him, and though none of them remained at Newfoundland that winter, several afterwards returned and took possession of their allotments by virtue of Sir Humphrey's grants. It is, therefore, with justice that Sir Humphrey Gilbert has been

3 Sir Walter Raleigh, step-brother to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, was one of his companions in this enterprise; and although it proved unsuccessful, the instructions of Sir Humphrey could not fail to be of service to Raleigh, who at this time was not much above twenty-five, while the Admiral must have been in the maturity of his years and abilities.-Tytler's Life of Raleigh; Warburton's Conquest of Canada.

4 "Raleigh, who by this time had risen into favour with the Queen, did not embark on the expedition, but he induced his royal mistress to take so deep an interest in its success that, on the eve of its sailing from Plymouth, she commissioned him to convey to Sir H. Gilbert her earnest wishes for his success, with a special token of regarda little trinket representing an anchor guided by a lady. The following was Raleigh's letter, written from the Court :- Brother,—I have sent you a token from her Majesty, an anchor guided by a Lady, as you see; and further, her Highness willed me to send you word, that she wished you as great good hap and safety to your ship as if she herself were there in person, desiring you to have care of yourself as of that which she tendereth; and therefore, for her sake, you must provide for it accordingly. Farther, she commandeth that you leave your picture with me. For the rest I leave till our meeting, or to the report of this bearer, who would needs be the messenger of this good news. So I commit you to the will and protection of God, who sends us such life and death as he shall please or hath appointed. Richmond, this Friday morning. Your true brother, WALTER RALEIGH.'-This letter is indorsed as having been received March 18, 1582-3, and it may be remarked that it settles the doubt as to the truth of Prince's story of the golden anchor, questioned by Campbell in his Lives of the Admirals. In the Heroölogia Anglica, p. 65, there is a fine print of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, taken evidently from an original picture; but, unlike the portrait mentioned by Grainger, it does not bear the device mentioned in the text. Raleigh's letter explains this differWhen Sir Humphrey was at Plymouth, on the eve of sailing, the Queen commands him, we see, to leave his picture with Raleigh. This must allude to a portrait already painted; and of course the golden anchor then sent could not be seen in it. Now, he perished on the voyage. The picture at Devonshire House, mentioned by Grainger, which bears this honourable badge, must therefore have been painted after his death."-Tytler's Raleigh, p. 45; Grainger's Biographical History, vol. i. p. 246; Cayley, vol. i. p. 31; Prince's Worthies of Devonshire; Warburton's Conquest of Canada.

ence.

called the father of our North American empire. In the September of 1583, Gilbert left St. John's Harbour to explore the coast, being himself on board a small sloop, The Squirrel, of only ten tons burden, and having two larger vessels with him. One of his consorts soon foundered in a storm; and Gilbert then steered for home through a tempestuous sea, still remaining in the little sloop, and accompanied by the Golden Hind, the survivor of the two larger ships. The latter vessel alone ever reached land. On the ninth of September her crew saw the last of the sloop that carried Gilbert. They were close to her for a short period during that day, both vessels being in imminent peril, especially the Squirrel. The Golden Hind drifted by her a little before nightfall, and the crew of the larger bark plainly discovered Gilbert standing on the stern with a book in his hand, and they heard him exclaim to his men, "Courage, my lads, we are as near Heaven at sea as on land."

For some hours those on board the Golden Hind saw a small light rise and fall at a little distance from them, and they knew that it was the lantern of their admiral's vessel that was plunging and rolling among the stormy waves. Soon after midnight the light suddenly disappeared. The little bark had been swallowed up by the sea, and the brave and good Sir Humphrey Gilbert had perished with her. (Chalmers' Biog. Dict.-Hakluyt's Voyages. -Warburton's Conquest of Canada.)

WILLIAM OUGHTRED.

THE increased attention that has lately been paid at Eton to the study of mathematics, augments the pleasure with which we recognise among the Etonians of the sixteenth century the first mathematician of his time, and one of the ablest that England has ever produced. William Oughtred was born at Eton in 1573, was educated on the foundation of the College, and became a Kingsman in 1592. Aubrey, in his curious biographical memoir of Oughtred, says: "His father taught to write at Eaton, and was a scrivener; and understood common arithmetique, and 'twas no small help and furtherance to his son to be instructed in it when a school-boy." Oughtred made diligent use of the advantages which Eton and Cambridge gave him for acquiring classical and philosophical instruction; but the bent of his genius was to

the mathematics; and in boyhood, youth, manhood and old age, he spent the greatest part of his time in what he fondly termed "the more than Elysian fields of the mathematical sciences." At the age of twenty-three he wrote his Horologiographia Geometrica, a treatise on geometrical dialling, which was first published in 1647. In 1600, he projected the instrument now known as the Sliding Rule, by which the processes of addition and subtraction are performed mechanically; and which by the use of logarithmic scales is adapted for the similar performance of multiplication and division. Oughtred set little value on this most ingenious and scientific invention, nor was it till thirty years afterwards that his casual mention of it in conversation with one of his pupils caused it to be given to the world. A most dishonest attempt was made by a person named Delemain to pirate the invention, but Oughtred then came forward and fully vindicated his title as the original discoverer. In 1631 appeared Oughtred's "Arithmetica in Numero et Speciebus Institutio," or as it was speedily and generally called his "Clavis." This work soon became the text-book for mathematical students at Cambridge, and the first mathematicians of the age lent Oughtred their assistance in passing successive editions through the press. Other works of high merit and reputation on mathematical subjects were published by him during his life; and, according to Aubrey, more scientific discoveries might have been given by him to the world, had it not been for the penurious disposition of a lady whom he married, and who "would not allow him to burn candle after supper, by which means many a good notion is lost and many a problem unsolved." This, however, seems only to have been the case in his extreme old age; for Aubrey elsewhere tells us, on the authority of Oughtred's eldest son, that Oughtred "studyed late at night: went not to bed till 11 o'clock; had his tinder box by him; and on the top of his bedstaffe he had his ink-horne fixed. He slept but little. Sometimes he went not to bed in two or three nights, and would not come down to meale till he had found out the quæsitum." The same authority states, "None of his sonnes he could make any great scholar. He was a little man, had black hair and black eies, with a great deal of spirit. His witt was always working; he would draw lines and diagrams in the dust."

Oughtred's marriage, which Aubrey thinks to have been so prejudicial to science, took place some time after he obtained the