ings, tortures, butcheries; hatred of the dark, crooked devil's work of a plotting, murdering Jesuitism, which absolved the reckless perjuries of the conspirator, and consecrated the cursed dagger of the assassin; it meant hatred of the Inquisitor, wielding the sword of the tyrant and wearing the ephod of the priest. But with Raleigh-born when the fires of Smithfield were barely extinguished, reading Foxe's "Martyrs" at his mother's knee, who, as a boy, had fought against Alva in the Netherlands, and seen Condé die at Jarnac, whose ears had thrilled with the shrieks of St. Bartholomew, and who knew how Philip of Spain had laughed aloud when he heard of that awful massacre, and how Pope Gregory XIII. had struck medals and sung Te Deums in its honor-to Ra- . leigh hatred of popery was, in that day, inevitably one with loyalty to Elizabeth and love of England, and passion for the primary rights, the natural liberty and free conscience of mankind. And because he was a life-long foe to popery he was a life-long foe to Spain, which was then trying to blight the whole world with the upas shadows of abhorrent absolutism.

The great men of Elizabeth knew that the triumph of Spain, the triumph of popery, would have meant the holiness of racks and the beatitude of thumbscrews. It would have meant that the England of Elizabeth would have reeked, as did the England of James II., with the odors of the charnel-house. It was this that made Raleigh fight papists in Ireland, which he called then, as it is now, 66 not the common weal, but the common woe; and fight papists in France, and in the Netherlands, and on the Armada, and in the New World. It was this which made him burn the Spanish fleet in Cadiz Bay. It was this that made him tell in immortal prose, as Tennyson has told in immortal verse, that death of Sir Richard Grenville, when one English ship fought for fifteen mortal hours against fifty-three Spanish ships at the Azores. Yes, in the era of the Reformation hatred of

popery meant love of truth, love of England, love of freedom, love of progress, air, and light.

But, nobly as Raleigh served the cause of England and the cause of the Reformation, it is with the New World and its colonization that his name will be most gloriously and most permanently connected. To Raleigh and the old sea worthies of England the New World meant Eldorado. But Spain, forsooth, claimed the whole of this New World by virtue of a trumpery parchment signed by a meddling Italian priest ! And how did this land of promise and golden dreams fare in the hands of popery and Spain? The tale of their greed and cruelty rang through all lands. The flames woven on the banners of Cortez were the accursed emblem of the Inquisition. But they had not occupied a third, even, of the coast; and was that land of boundless wonder and beauty, of boundless fertility and wealth, to be abandoned to them? Were millions of innocent Indians to be treated like brute beasts? Were the English, whom they called "Lutheran devils," to be handed over to the rack and the galleys, if they ventured to trade, nay, if they were but shipwrecked, on those shores? Not if Raleigh could help it! His genius fixed upon, and his dauntless patience and princely munificence secured regions which had almost escaped the notice of Spain. On the colonization of Virginia he spent £40,000, and was ready to spend his whole fortune, to the last coin.

Let me for one moment glance at his life and end. If you would judge of his zenith, see him in the splendor of Durham House, his beautiful wife beside him, his noble boy at his knee, sometimes flashing about as captain of Elizabeth's guard, in his armor of enameled silver; sometimes in his "doublet of white satin, all embroidered with rich pearls, and a weighty chain of great pearls around his neck;' the friend of Sidney, the patron of Spenser, the companion of Ben Jonson and Shakspere, lord of the Stannaries, governor of Munster, governor of Jersey, rear-admiral of the

fleet against the Azores; ruffling it with Leicester and Essex, their equal in manly beauty; "lording it with awful ascendency" in the fairy-land of Gloriana's Court-" a man at whom men gazed as at a star." Envy not his splendor! All the while he was struggling in a net-work of base intrigues. Long before pride and passion led him into sin, be had learned-as his poem, The Lie," ,"shows-how hollow and disappointing it all was. And then see the plunge right down to the very nadir of human misery and ruin. I know few tragedies to equal those last twelve years of his in the Tower of London. Elizabeth had died, "with the whole Book of Ecclesiastes written on her mighty heart," and the very basest and meanest of English kings, with no fear except to offend Spain and no money except to lavish on infamous favorites, disgraced her throne. Such a man as James naturally hated such a man as Raleigh. His fair day at once drew to evening. "I am left of all men," he wails, " that have done good to many. All my good turns forgotten, all my errors revived and expounded to all extremity of ill, all my services, hazards, and expenses for my country-plantings, discoveries, fights, counsels, and whatsoever-dire malice has now covered over." Ah! what a shipwreck of man's ingratitude! and how common on the treacherous sea of life! And then came the midnight. Imprisoned, robbed, slandered, yet enriching even his prison hours with the " History of the World; " in vain attempting suicide, betrayed by his own king, suffering from fever, losing his gallant boy in battle, and his devoted adherent by suicide; old, gray-headed, lame, worn with sickness, anguish, and watching; penniless, ruined, dishonored-finding the whole world turned for him to thorns—after being belied for a while in a hubbub of lies, he is, at a day's notice, infamously doomed to the scaffold. In all those awful fires God had purged away all his dross. He had long learned to defy death in all his ugly and misshapen forms. “O, eloquent, just, and mighty death," he wrote at the end of his

History of the World," "whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hast dared, thou hast done; and whom the world flattered, thou hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-fetched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, 'hic jacet.' Even such, he wrote in his cell the evening before his execution :

66

A sharp med"I entreat you," prayer to the God

"Prythee, let me see the ax," he says to the executioner. "Dost thou think, man, I am afraid of it?" icine, but a sound cure for all diseases.' he says, "that you will all join with me in of heaven, whom I have grievously offended, being a man full of all vanity, who have lived a sinful life, that the Almighty Goodness will forgive; that he will cast away my sins from me; that he will receive me into everlasting life. So I take leave of you all, making my peace with God." He says but one more word. Asked to face toward the east, he says: "If the heart be right, it matters not which way the head lies." So dies the most brilliant of Englishmen; so fades all glory into darkness, and all life into dust, that we may give God the splendor.

10

XXXVII.

GATHERING OF THE STORM.-EWALD.

[In view of the training in absolute government which Charles had had under his father, it is no wonder that his reign ended in revolution. Under the influence of an unprincipled favorite, Buckingham, and to gratify personal whims, he plunged recklessly into foreign wars. He summoned two Parliaments in quick succession, and when they refused to vote him all the money he wanted for his useless military expeditions, which were led by incompetent commanders, he dissolved them in anger, and undertook to supply his necessities by means of forced loans. Hence "the gathering of the storm."]

In the meantime the unconstitutional proceedings instituted by Charles, though they inflamed the country with wrath and sedition, failed to replenish the coffers of his exhausted exchequer. The general loan had been well subscribed to, but all its proceeds were swallowed up by the pressing necessities of the Crown. In the expenditure of the past year there was a vast deficit. The preparations for war now amounted to a fearful total. The pay of the soldiers and the seamen was rated at some £200,000 a year, and if Rochelle was to be relieved in the spring, another £100,000 would be required. How, and from whom, were these sums to be obtained? The king was aware that the inevitable must be boldly faced, and he summoned his memorable third Parliament. We all remember the scenes that took place. The Commons, conscious of their power and of the justness of the grievances they complained of, refused to be brow-beaten, or to yield one jot of their demands. Five subsidies were voted, but before they were handed to the king the representatives of the people determined to obtain a guarantee against the abuses of the past. The Petition of Right was drawn up. Charles was asked to pledge himself that he would never raise loans or levy taxes without the consent of