world-renowned exploit with Sir John Falstaff. On sailing down the stream at high-water, the eminence is plainly visible, and scarcely fails, to the man who knows its name, to awaken a long train of pleasant recollections. Even the man of figures and accounts forgets them for awhile, and dwells with pleasure on the reminiscence; but the dreamer, the poet, the lover of romance, the man who loves to cherish these topographical pleasures which are the great charm of travelling, whether we travel twenty miles or two thousand;-what delight does he not find! Such a man disembarks immediately. He is not content with the glimpse of the hill obtained from the deck of a steam-boat, but trudges forward valiantly, until his own feet tread the actual soil of which he has so often heard, and which is associated with so much romance and so much genuine comedy. "Here," he says, traversing the ground leisurely up and down, "here lay fat Jack, with his ear to the ground, and dolefully asked the prince whether he had any levers to lift him up again; and swore that for all the coin in Henry IVth's exchequer, he would not trust his own flesh so far afoot again. Here, perchance, is the spot, where he bullied the travellers, finding they were afraid, and called them gorbellied knaves, fat chuffs, and chewbacons. Here, too, may be the bush, where the Prince said to Poins, that if they could rob the thieves, and go merrily to London, it would be argument for a week, laughter for a month, and a good jest for ever (and lo, it has turned out even as the Prince predicted). And here, too, may be the very spot, where the rogue, Falstaff, roared, and gave up his illgotten spoils so easily to that very Prince and Poins, of whom he was saying but a minute before, that they were both arrant cowards, and that in Poins especially, there was no more valour than in a wild duck. Yes here is the scene," continues he, with all the enthusiasm of a pilgrim at the shrine of a saint, forgetting that all was but a coinage of the great poet's brain, that the inimitable Jack never trod this earth at all-but that he still lives in the world of fiction, where he will live till the English language is forgotten. But no matter: these mirages, raised by the enchanting wand of the poet and painter, are among the most unalloyed delights of our existence. They gild with a halo of light many a dreary landscape; and warm a bleak and barren hill with the glow and animation of life. We who have visited this spot more than once or twice or thrice, indulge in the same dream every time we go, and would be sorry indeed to believe that even the hundredth visit to the spot, would find us insensible to its claims upon our heart, or undelighted with the charms of the Shakspeare who has enshrined it in his verse for ever. But we have wandered from the banks of the Thames, where, opposite to Gravesend, stands an historical spot, requiring proper and honourable mention from our pen, Tilbury Fort, the scene of Elizabeth's bravery and animation, when her shores were threatened with invasion. The fort was built by Henry VIII. to protect the towns on the river from the recurrence of scenes such as that which took place at Gravesend in the reign of Richard II. It was enlarged and strengthened by Charles II. when the Dutch fleet sailed up the Medway in 1667, and burned three men-of-war opposite Chatham. The spot where the English army was encamped in 1588, is a short distance further down the stream, at West Tilbury, where the traces of the encampment are still visible. The country was in a state of the greatest alarm, The naval forces of England at that time were not very considerable; and had not the very elements conspired against Spain, had not her most experienced naval commanders been cut off by death at the very moment they were about to join the expedition, leaving the command to the unskilled and inefficient Duke of Medina Sidonia, there is no saying what the result might have been, or whether England would have held the same rank among the nations that she holds now.* Bale fires blazed * The naval reader may be pleased to see a correct account, from a contemporary historian, of the various vessels that composed the English fleet at that period. The list is copied from Stowe's Annals, and will afford the sailor of the present day some notion of the very small maritime strength of England in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and that too in a case of emergency, when every available ship was put into requisition. "The navy set forth and arrived to the seas," says Stowe, "consisted partly of her Majesty's ships, partly of the ships of her subjects, which were furnished out of the port towns whereunto they belonged. Of this navy the chiefest and greatest part was under the charge of the Lord Charles Howard, Lord Admiral; the rest of the ships, in great number, were assigned unto the Lord Henry Seymour, Admiral of that fleet to guard the narrow seas. The States also of the United Provinces in the Low Countries sent about the same number of forty ships out of Holland and Zealand, well appointed and furnished in warlike manner, which joined with the English fleet under the charge of the said Lord Henry Seymour, playing upon the coast of Dunkirk and Flanders. "SHIPS UNDER THE LORD ADMIRAL'S CHARGE. "Her Majesty's Ships from Queenborough towards Plymouth in the month of January last past, under Sir Francis Drake: : The Revenge, The Swiftsure, Hope, Aide. |