find true and lasting riches and endless comfort. For the rest, when you have travailed, and wearied your thoughts over all sorts of worldly cogitation, you shall but sit down by sorrow in the end. Teach your son also to love and fear God while he is yet young, that the fear of God may grow up with him. And then God will be a husband to you and a father to him-a husband and a father which cannot be taken from you. When I am góne, no doubt you shall be sought to by many, for the world thinks that I was very rich. But take heed of the pretences of men and their affections. For they last not but in honest and worthy men; and no greater misery can befall you in this life than to become a prey and afterward to be despised. I speak not this, God knows, to dissuade you from marriage, for it will be best for you both in respect of the world and of God. As for me, I am no more yours, nor you mine. Death has cut us asunder, and God hath divided me from the world, and you from me. Remember your poor child for his father's sake, who chose you and loved you in his happiness. Get those letters, if it be possible, which I writ to the Lords, wherein I sued for my life. God is my witness it was for you and yours that I desired life. But it is true that I disdain myself for begging it; for know it, dear wife, that your son is the son of a true man, and one who, in his own respect, despiseth death and all his misshapen and ugly forms. I cannot write much. God he knoweth how hardly I steal this time while others sleep. And it is also high time that I· should separate my thoughts from the world. Beg my dead body which, living, was denied thee, and either lay it at Sherborne, if the land continue, or in Exeter church by my father and mother. I can say no more-time and death call me away. The everlasting, powerful, infinite, and omnipotent God, who is goodness itself, the true life and true light, keep thee and thine, have mercy on me, and teach me to forgive my. persecutors and accusers, and send us to meet in his glorious kingdom. My dear wife, farewell! Bless my poor boy-pray for me, and let my good God hold you both in his arms! Written with the dying hand of, sometime thy husband, but now, alas! overthrown.

"Yours that was, but now not my own,

"WALTER RALEIGH."

When the day of execution arrived, James, by a display of childish mummery so ridiculous that he contrived to render ludicrous even the horrid solemnities of a public execution, was pleased to reprieve first Cobham, next Lord Grey, and finally Raleigh, who was in momentary expectation of being brought to the block, and anticipated no postponement. Let it not, however, be hence too hastily supposed that the royal pedant had a heart to appreciate the manly virtues of his unhappy prisoner, or a conscience to scourge him for his cruel persecution of the innocent. It was no kingly benevolence that led to the reprieve; it was, as subsequent events proved, but the refinement of a cruelty that loved to protract misery, and that suspended the blow, not with the benevolent intention of sparing the victim, but only that the sword might fall the heavier when it did descend. And now let us look once more on Raleigh in captivity—a grievous captivity of more than twelve weary years.

Consigned to the tower, the first act of his noble, true-hearted wife, was to solicit the privilege of sharing a prison with her persecuted husband. She clung the closer because fortune frowned, and proved the holy deathlessness of her devoted love. She was worthy of the high-souled being who called her wife. Every act proved it. When the despicable thing who occupied the throne, not content with conniving at a murder, stooped next to the meanness of a robbery and deprived Raleigh of his lands, to confer them on one of the swarm of his needy countrymen, who flocked around him to swear that he was a second Solomon, what was the conduct of this faithful woman? She sought the royal presence, and with all the affection and earnestness of a sorrowing, broken-hearted wife and mother, implored the king to have compassion on her and hers, and not to consign them to utter beggary. The courtiers, moved by sympathy, looked on in silence, and in pity for her woes hoped that her sorrows might find some alleviation in the grant of her prayer. The only answer she could obtain from the royal brute was that he must have the lands for Car, one of his favorites. Lady Raleigh, remembering her noble birth and breeding, and, with a lofty burst of indignant feeling, worthy of her husband's wife, scorned to repeat her request; but, falling on her knees before the amazed courtiers

and the affrighted king, lifted her hands to heaven, and in the bitterness of her spirit, appealing to the King of kings, besought the God of Heaven to remember her wrongs, to look upon the justice of her cause, and in his own good time to visit those who had so unrighteously brought her and hers to beggary and ruin. It was a fearful malediction from an oppressed and injured woman. While the imprecation yet rung in the ears of the alarmed and astonished king, she rose, took her child by the hand, and with an air of queenly majesty, retired. History would almost lead us to think, as we recall the fate of the infatuated house of Stuart, that her imprecation was heard and answered in heaven.*

But poor as she was, she yet felt herself rich in the possession of her captive husband, to whom she hastened, and whose privations she felt it a privilege to share. And now what was to become of him? We have seen that his life had been one of enterprise and activity. Immured within the gloomy walls of the tower, what shall now relieve the wearisome hours of an unusual and unnatural state of quietude? Books-God be thanked for them-books. We have seen that the prisoner had ever been a student. Were no resources then left to him with his wonderful versatility of talent? The oppressor "held his body bound, but knew not what a range his spirit took." He could sit and sing, "My mind to me a kingdom is." And so sweet was the note, that Prince Henry, the heir apparent to the throne, as rich in intellect and virtue as his father was deficient in both, ex

* It is curious to follow the history of Raleigh's persecutors and enemies and mark their respective fates. The Stuarts were hurled from the throne in disgrace. Robert Cecil died the miserable victim of remorse, "pushed," as he said, "from the shore of comfort."

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Cobham," says Osborn, "died in a room, ascended by a ladder, at a poor woman's house in the Minories, formerly his laundress, rather of hunger than of any more natural disease."

Lewis Stukeley, who acted as a spy on him after his return from Guiana, was commonly known as Sir Judas," and was finally arraigned at the bar of the King's Bench for clipping the gold coin of the realm, and the miserable Frenchman, Manourie, the other spy, fled the kingdom, because he was involved in Stukeley's guilt, acknowledging that he had falsely accused Raleigh, and was therefore overtaken by God's judgment upon him.

Coke lost favor at court, but died rich, after a life of miserable domestic unhappiness.

claimed, "No monarch in christendom but my father would keep such a bird as this in a cage."

With this noble youth, who had qualities that befit a king, Raleigh became an especial favorite. All the collected stores of the wisdom and experience of many years were freely taxed by the poor prisoner for the amusement and instruction of the prince. Henry thirsted after knowledge, and could appreciate (youth though he was) the genius and attainments of Raleigh. He therefore sought his society and learned to love him. Many an hour of confinement in that sad abode passed by on rapid wings, while Raleigh was spreading the exuberant riches of his own well-stored and ever fertile mind before his affectionate and attentive prince.

It was for him that, amid the gloom of a prison, and with but imperfect aids for reference, Raleigh produced that most astonishing work-his History of the World. Well has it been described as "an extraordinary monument of human labor and genius." Vast in subject, profound in learning and research, wise in its reflections, and beautiful in style, it was composed, as has been well said, "not in the luxury of lettered and philosophic ease, surrounded by books and friends, but in imprisonment, solitude and sorrow-not in the enthusiastic consciousness of unimpaired powers, but with a mind which had been harassed by a cruel persecution, and sickened by hope deferred." * But this was not all: various essays, and on various subjects, were written for the prince by Raleigh, and they were not less wise than various. He taught Henry that ships and seamen were to be England's true strength, and instructing him in naval architecture and navigation the prince had but just commenced build

* There are but few incidents in English literary history more absurdly ludicrous than the pretended "discovery," as he calls it, of the elder D'Israeli, that Sir Walter Raleigh did not write the "History of the World," which appeared under his name. The "discoverer" drew upon himself the ridicule and chastisement he deserved. Mr. Napier thus speaks of D'Israeli's pretended discovery : "This piece of secret history, alike revolting and preposterous, was well rebutted by Mr. Tytler; but it has been more recently examined, and with signal chastisement, given to the winds, in a small publication, little known, we suspect, though forming one of the most learned and acute contributions to literary history that has appeared in our day." The work alluded to is "Curiosities of Literature, by J. D'Israeli, Esq., Illustrated by Bolton Corney, Esq."

ing a ship when, at the age of eighteen, he was cut down by death. It was a dreadful blow to Raleigh, for he had learned to love him, and he lost a friend who was determined to persevere until he procured the liberation of the poor captive. But if friends fell, enemies too were gathered in by the mighty reaper, death. The time came for Robert Cecil to go to a world where no tricks of statesmen ever turn the current of justice. Life had become to him a weary load. "Ease and pleasure," said the dying man, "quake to hear of death; but my life, full of cares and miseries, desireth to be dissolved." Well might he say "full of cares and miseries," and not the least among them was the misery of remorse. He had climbed the ladder of ambition to its very top, and what had he gained by his toilsome labor? One of his own letters, written soon after he had succeeded in convicting poor Raleigh, answers the question. "Rest content," says he, to Sir John Harrington, "and give heed to one that hath sorrowed in the bright lustre of a court, and gone heavily even on the best seeming fair ground. 'Tis a great task to prove one's honesty, and yet not spoil one's fortune. I wish I waited now in your presence-chamber, with ease at my food and rest in my bed. I am pushed from the shore of comfort, and know not where the winds and waves of a court will bear me. I know it bringeth little comfort on earth, and he is, I reckon, no wise man that looketh that way to heaven." And thus went to his last account the great Robert Cecil. His death, doubtless, accelerated the release of Raleigh, but had it been longer delayed, the prisoner's resources would still have made confinement tolerable. It is wonderful to remark the variety and extent of his intellectual pursuits. Fitting up a small building within the walls as a laboratory, he prosecuted his chemical studies, and when tired of his retorts and alembics, he turned with facility to history or politics, or philosophy. Not even his muse was suffered to slumber. Age, indeed, had brought a change of subjects, but age could not kill his imagination. His numbers flowed as sweetly as before, though more solemnly than when he sang of love to Cecil's son. He now invoked the muse for consolation in the dreariness and gloom of a prison. His lyre was tuned to holier music: