gold; all had wrought the bolder spirits of the age to the highest excitement.

The efforts of the English had hitherto been directed to the northern part of America. There was to be a northwest passage to India, and many were the mines of gold to be explored in lands lying north of Hudson's Straits. At this time, (1578) Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Raleigh's step-brother, with a sounder judgment, formed a plan for the permanent settlement of North America. He obtained a liberal patent from Elizabeth, and prevailed upon Raleigh to abandon his military pursuits and try his fortune in the voyage. It was an unfortunate project. Many who had hastily engaged in the expedition, as hastily deserted. Gilbert and Raleigh put to sea with only a few faithful friends, but one of their ships was soon lost, and the remainder obliged to return.

No sooner had Raleigh reached England than a new scene of adventure opened before him in the Irish rebellion. He obtained a captain's commission under the Earl of Ormond, and exhibited so much skill and courage in that petty warfare, that he was soon appointed Governor of Cork, and received as a reward for his services a considerable estate in the vicinity of that city. On the suppression of this rebellion, he returned to England. A high reputation for every noble accomplishment had preceded him; a reputation somewhat overshadowed however by the more dazzling lustre of the statesmen and warriors who now graced the English court. Never perhaps was there a more illustrious group than that "of which Elizabeth is the central figure, that group which," according to Gray, as quoted by Macaulay, "the last of the bards seen in vision from the top of Snowden, encircling the virgin Queen :

Many a baron bold,

And gorgeous dames, and state men old
In bearded majesty appear."

The cool, sagacious, wary Burleigh, for forty years and during the reigns of three successive sovereigns, Minister of England, was now in the zenith of his power. The gay, magnificent and profli gate Dudley, Earl of Leicester-Sussex, Lord Chamberlain, the beau ideal of an English soldier - Philip Sidney, the peerless, all-accomplished, deemed worthy of a foreign throne, though he held no office in England-the dexterous and insinuating Walsingham -the rash and impetuous Oxford-" the elegant Sackville," Drake, Frobisher, and Howard-all were leaders and masters in their various classes. Among these was Raleigh to act a part. The circumstances of his introduction at court were such that the genius of Romance seems to have displaced the muse of History, and for a time to have ruled the hour. In her progress on one occasion from her palace to the royal barge, the Queen, surrounded by her nobles and officers, came to a spot where the rains of a preceding night had made the ground so moist as to be little fitted for royal footsteps. She paused a moment, and hesitated to advance. At his instant, Raleigh stepped forward among the em

barrassed courtiers, and with an air of devoted and admiring gallantry, which no one knew better how to assume, threw off his richly embroidered velvet cloak and spread it upon the earth. Her majesty stopped an instant, looked with surprised and delighted interest upon the noble form of the young soldier, to whom she owed so fair a carpet, passed lightly over it, and proceeded on her way. Raleigh was immediately sent for and taken into her service. It is not to be wondered at that he rose rapidly into favor at a court, whose sovereign was "never indifferent to the admiration she excited among her subjects, or to the fair proportions of external form which distinguished any of her courtiers." She appointed Raleigh to an office about her person, and soon after, upon refusing her hand to the Duke of Anjou, sent him to the Netherlands as one of the splendid retinue of nobles which attended that prince, on his return from England to his government in that country.

The apt pupil of Coligni however did not forget nobler enterprises in the dazzling atmosphere of the court. He had never lost sight of the project of American discovery, and he now united with his brother Gilbert in a second expedition. Of the five ships of which this was composed, Raleigh built and fitted out the largest at his sole expense, and called it by his own name; though, in consequence, as it should seem of the wishes of the Queen, he did not himself embark in the expedition. But a succession of disasters attended the undertaking from the outset. An infectious distemper broke out on board the Raleigh, and she was obliged to return in two days after leaving port. Gilbert proceeded on his way; but, after taking possession of Newfoundland, he was obliged to abandon one of his ships, and soon after lost his largest remaining vessel somewhere off the coast of Maine. Discontent, mutiny and sickness among his crew led him at length, reluctantly to abandon the idea of proceeding further south and to return to England. He was last seen on board his little bark, "a vessel scarcely twice as large as the long boat of a merchantman,"encouraging his crew, and telling them "we are as near to Heaven by sea as by land." But, after a night of terrible storm, when the morning dawned upon the deep, not a trace of the little bark or of the brave hearts it bore was seen again.

The sanguine spirit of Raleigh was not discouraged by the sad fate of his brother. He remembered the accounts which he had heard in France of a sunnier climate and a richer soil, and he determined to secure those fairer lands to the English crown, Learning from the Spanish voyagers that the coast of America was seen to stretch away to the north from Florida, and that there was a peculiar current of the sea in the same direction, he was led to infer the probability of an extended territory between the Spanish possessions in the south and the regions discovered by Cabot in the north. In this enterprise he risked almost the whole of his private fortune, and sent out Amidus and Barlow on a new voyage of discovery. On the 2d July, 1584, they reached the shores of Carolina. The air was loaded with a delicious fragrance as they

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approached the land. The rich luxuriance of southern vegetation, "gigantic oaks," the great variety of "sweet smelling trees,"the "vallies wooded with fragrant cedars, around whose trunks wild vines hung in graceful festoons,"-" grapes, covering the ground" and even dipping" their rich "clusters into the sea," "dark arbors," through whose thick shades the suns of July could not pierce, the air, gentle and balmy,-the inhabitants, mild, docile, faithful," void of all deceit," and seeming to live in the happy innocence of the golden age; these were among the wondrous things which filled up the story of the voyage on their return to England. Such a story "as might be expected," says Bancroft, "from men who had done no more than sail over the smooth waters of a summer sea among the hundred islands of North Carolina."

Raleigh was highly delighted with this new discovery. It was in every sense his own. Devised by his enterprising mind, and undertaken at his sole suggestion and expense, it established in a manner perfectly satisfactory the results of his previous reasoning. His royal mistress was scarcely less gratified, and gave to the newly discovered country the name of Virginia.

The prospect of becoming proprietor and feudal lord of a territory so goodly and so wide, was hardly necessary to stimulate the ambition of Raleigh, and the following year, while a member of Parliament for his native county, and at the same time contributing to aid Davis in his voyage for the discovery of a northwestern passage to India, he fitted out another fleet for Virginia. The new expedition took out 108 colonists. Lane is their governor; a man, who, however brave as a soldier, seems to have been but little fitted for the duties of his new situation. Hasty, credulous, greedy of gold, more ready to resent and repel real or imaginary insults than to exercise the coolness and self command so essential in his position, we need not wonder that the result was a speedy and total failure. Disappointed in their search for gold, some of their number cut off by the natives, and the remainder at Roanoke in danger of starvation, the colonists took advantage of the arrival of Drake's fleet from the West Indies to return to England. The return at such a time was most unfortunate. They had scarcely sailed when a vessel which Raleigh had sent with supplies arrived on the coast, followed in two weeks by three others under Grenville, all of which sought in vain for the departed colony. Finding every thing in ruins, Grenville reluctantly returned.

With a spirit which seemed to acquire fresh energy from disappointment, Raleigh now modifies his previous plan of colonization, determines to plant an agricultural state and sends emigrants with their families to make their homes in the new world. He designates the Bay of the Chesapeake as the place for the new settlement. But the colonists were different men from those, who, trained in another school, landed thirty years after on Plymouth Rock. Want of enterprise and disunion among themselves caused them to lay the foundation of their new city on the island of Roanoke. Disasters thickened around them, but they had neither the high re

ligious principle nor the fortitude necessary to meet them. On the return of the ships to England, White, the governor, was prevailed upon to go back for reinforcements and supplies, leaving his daughter, Eleanor, and his grandchild, Virginia Dare, as hostages for his return.

The time of his arrival in England was most unpropitious to the interests of the infant colony. The whole nation was agitated by the expected invasion of the "Invincible Armada." Although actively engaged in devising means for the national defence, Raleigh found time to despatch two ships to Virginia; but these were attacked by a Spanish privateer and obliged to put back. It was not till more than a year after, that White could return in search of his colony and his child. He came and found only a desert. Like its predecessors, this colony also had been swept away. Though no English town had as yet been established on this continent, it had been thickly planted with English graves. Raleigh "long cherished the hope of discovering some vestiges of his colony," and "sent five several times" to learn something of its fate. It was in vain. Imagination only is left to trace its dark and untimely end. "The island of Roanoke, now tenanted only by the bold pilot and the hardy wrecker," is left as the spot where the Muse of American history still points to the ruins of this ill-fated settlement,-the first city of Raleigh. The strong man and the devoted womanthe mother and her new-born child sleep there together.

It were an interesting matter to linger over that brilliant page of English history which records the story of the Spanish Armada. The grand design,-the long-continued and gigantic preparations of Philip, the proud vaunting of victory,-the sudden and utter destruction, all seem like a tale of fancy. If we give ourselves up to the leading of contemporary chroniclers however, the scene is all before us. We mingle in the bustle of preparation where every corner of the land rings with the mustering of forces and the tread of armed men. We are at the gathering of Tilbury, and drink in the stirring words of Elizabeth, as she rides before the serried ranks-"I have the body of a feeble woman, but I have the heart of a king, and a king of England too." We look out with the stout-hearted Drake from his ship, as the hostile fleet heaves in sight, and our hearts beat to his words, "we have the enemy of Spain before us, and mind by the grace of God to wrestle a fall with them." And, when He who "commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind, hides his face and they are troubled, takes away their breath and they die," we too move in the splendid pageant which commemorates the victory, and give thanks to Him who " blew upon the enemy and they were scattered."

In all these things Raleigh bore no inconsiderable part. As one of the council of war, he proposed a plan for surprising and destroying the enemy's fleet ere it should sail for England. When other measures were adopted, he actively engaged as Lieutenant General of Cornwall in the discipline of the troops, and upon the appearance of the enemy in the channel, joined the English fleet

with ships of his own, and shared with Howard and Drake and Frobisher in the peril and glory of the victory. The notes of rejoicing had scarcely died away, when we find Raleigh devising a plan for correspondence and union among men of letters, thus forming the germ of those literary and scientific associations which are the glory of a later age. The next year, accompanied by a number of his countrymen, he embarked for Portugal with its refugee King in an attempt to restore him to the throne of his ancestors. On his return, he revisited his estates in Ireland, and formed an acquaintance with the poet Spenser. His taste led him to persuade this son of song to break away from the artificial and euphonistic trammels of the school of Sidney and Dyer, to follow the bent of his native genius, and "build the lofty fabric of English rhyme." Shortly after his return to court, when he introduced Spenser to Elizabeth, Raleigh engaged in an expedition against Panama, with the design of intercepting the Spanish plate fleet on its return to Europe. He was imprudent enough to invest his whole fortune in the enterprise, and while Elizabeth had contributed most sparingly to the expense, she was much chagrined at the ill success of the undertaking. There were not wanting however other reasons for the disgrace of Raleigh. He had been charged with Atheism in an infamous libel, and, what was a darker offence in the eyes of the Queen, had formed an attachment to one of her maids of honor, to whom he was afterwards privately married. It was the peculiar weakness of Elizabeth that she claimed a monopoly not only of all the service, but of all the gallantry of her servants. If the ill success of Raleigh in the Panama expedition had touched her purse, his temerity in falling in love without her consent provoked her jealousy and her pride. The fallen favorite was sent to the Tower. But no one knew better than Raleigh how to make his court to the personal vanity of the Queen, or could better estimate the quantity of flattery which she could condescend to receive. It is said that understanding she was about to pass the Tower in her barge, he insisted on approaching the window, declaring that he would not be debarred from seeing once more the "Queen of his affections, his life, his light, his goddess;" and a letter is yet extant in which he complains to Secretary Cecil that the greatest misery of his confinement is that he can no longer behold her "riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus,-the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure cheeks like a nymph,-sometimes sitting in the shade like a goddess, and sometimes singing like an angel." Raleigh had not calculated amiss. She, who united in her matchless person all these various graces and accomplishments, "with her golden tresses wantoning in the amorous wind," was on the verge of sixty: but to this "nymph" of three score, the cup of flattery was neither too rich nor too full. The captive was set at liberty. During his confinement, Raleigh projected a scheme for the conquest of Guiana. Before we express our contempt for his credulity, and stigmatize him as a hair brained adventurer, it may