fraud and falsehood, have all combined to drag a noble spirit to the dust, and in their infernal success call upon us to look on the decayed, nay, ruined fortunes of one whose heaviest crime has been that God made him a greater man than his fellows? Such was the treatment that Sir Walter Raleigh received; and one might almost think that like his illustrious contemporary Bacon, he too was endowed with the spirit of prophetic anticipation. In his early offerings to the muse, he has left on record a sentiment which his own sad history proved to be no poetic fiction:

"Tho' sundry minds in sundry sort do deem,

Yet worthiest wights yield praise for every pain ;
But envious brains do naught, or light, esteem,

Such stately steps as they cannot attain :

For whoso reaps renown above the rest,

With heaps of hate shall surely be oppress'd."

Of the earlier years of Raleigh, no more need be said than that he was born in the year 1552, of an ancient and reputable family in Devon, and was sent to Oxford for his education. One of the wisest men that England ever produced has borne testimony to the genius and wit of the young student, and it is therefore no waste of time to follow the fortunes of one whose powers commanded the admiration of Bacon. His college life, however, exhibited little more than that remarkable union of the habits of a scholar with those of an active man of the world, which through his whole career characterized him. In his case, too, as in that of other distinguished men, his early reading gave color to the future complexion of his life.

The conquest of the Spaniards in this hemisphere furnished in his day a new story. Raleigh was much too imaginative not to be pleasurably excited by the romance embodied in the tales of Montezuma and the Inca, the chivalric boldness of Cortes and Pizarro; and as he was pre-eminently fitted for action, he felt that a field was open on this yet unknown continent for the exercise of his loftiest powers. Thus was he unconsciously preparing himself to become one of the boldest maritime adventurers of his age and nation.

Young, handsome, brave, accomplished and intelligent (for he was all this), the first field in which we find him playing the part of man, was France. It was at the period when the Protestants,

under the great Prince of Condé and Admiral Coligni, were struggling for religious liberty. Elizabeth, on more accounts than one, was not an indifferent spectator of this contest. She gave permission to Henry Champernon, who was a near kinsman of Raleigh, to raise a troop of a hundred gentlemen volunteers, and to pass over to the continent. The French historian, De Thou, has left a description of the appearance they made in the camp of the Protestants: "A gallant company," says he, “nobly mounted and accoutred, and bearing for a motto on their standard, 'Let valor decide the contest."" Of this troop was Raleigh, and one who knew him then, speaking of his education and bearing, writes, "it was not part, but wholly gentleman-wholly soldier." In this school he remained for more than six years, bearing well his share in some of the most memorable actions of the times, until the peace of 1576, when he returned to England. Very soon after this we find him in the Netherlands, a volunteer under the Prince of Orange against the Spaniards.

Raleigh must not, however, be considered a mere soldier of fortune, ready to draw his sword in any quarrel. Both in the Low Countries and in France, the principle for which he contended was the same. He was armed in the cause of liberty, and in both instances he was indirectly defending his country; for in both he had gone forth under the sanction of Elizabeth, and fought under the English standard.

Among his fellow-soldiers was one who, remarkable as much for his eccentricity as for his valor, had traveled far and fought in many lands, and in whom great versatility of genius was not without its usual accompaniment, a wonderful facility in devising multifarious projects. One of his many schemes was the establishment of a colony in America. When he adverted to this, he touched a chord in Raleigh's bosom which instantly gave a responsive vibration. Amid the toils of the camp, the young volunteer had never neglected the cultivation of his mind: he was a soldier student, and had mastered all that was then known on the subjects of cosmography and navigation. His half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, had obtained a patent for colonizing in North America leaving the army, Raleigh joined him to try his fortune on our shores. A combination of disasters, however, defeated

the undertaking, and he returned home without having seen this country, and with no other advantage than that derived from the lessons of his brother, one of the most experienced seamen of his age. Scarcely had he reached England, however, before he found himself in another scene of activity and war. Spain had stirred up the spirit of rebellion in Ireland. Raleigh now had a name as a soldier, and we find him at the seat of war in command of a company. Here it was that his remarkable talents first shone forth with a lustre that challenged notice. He found himself in various important trusts, and well did he execute them all. Uniting the sagacity and ripe judgment of age with the daring courage and uncalculating generosity of youth, he would now defeat the enemy by superior tactics, and now rush single-handed to the rescue of a friend, and bring him off in triumph at the peril of his life. The rebellion was suppressed, and Raleigh, with a reputation of the highest order among those who had stood by his side as soldiers, returned with no recommendations but those his own talents and attainments had procured, to play his part at a most eventful period among men more splendid than any other court in Europe at that day could boast.

And now we must digress from our narrative long enough to present a picture of the "Virgin Queen," and those whom she had gathered around her for the support of her throrca

Of Elizabeth herself, perhaps no more comprehensive character was ever sketched than that which came from the pen of her secretary, the younger Cecil, after the grave had secured him against the possibility of her resentment. She was, as he said, "more than a man, and in troth somewhat less than a woman.” In the masculine vigor of her understanding, and the lion-hearted boldness which she inherited from her father, she exhibited qualities belonging to the sterner sex; and was often more than many men would have been under the circumstances; while her feminine weaknesses went far beyond those of most women. The distinguishing features of the better part of her character were her admirable power of discriminating true mental strength; and of attaching to her service the devoted labors of the best minds in her kingdom. The individual who can do these things belongs not to the ordinary class. When seated at the council board, we

see none of Elizabeth's womanly follies. She had an opinion of her own, and was prepared with reasons to sustain it: she never forgot the dignity belonging to her station, and permitted not the greatest man before her in the slightest degree to entrench upon it. She knew no favorites in the discussion of great questions of state policy, and no reign presented more of such questions than her own. Her agents in important enterprises were always judiciously selected; no gilded court butterfly was ever sent to execute a difficult duty. She tolerated no fools about her when she was deliberating on the interests of her throne.

These are facts which deservedly place her among the very first of female sovereigns. But her weaknesses stand out in sad contrast to all these high qualities. She was vain much beyond the ordinary limits allowed to the weaker sex by the courtesy of the stronger. With features so plain that not even self-love could persuade her she was handsome, she yet was exceedingly anxious to be thought beautiful. A passionate admirer of beauty in the other sex, she exacted most mercilessly the homage of the handsomest men in her kingdom, and no miser was ever more covetous of gold than she was of admiration. When the frosts of sixty winters had whitened her locks, and the ploughshare of time had traced many a furrow in the wrinkles of her shriveled cheeks; so that ugliness had not even the small merit of healthy youth to redeem it from the loathings of disgust; she affected all the romantic sensibilities of love-sick sixteen. The smiles and sighs and tears and thousand interesting "femalities," so pretty and engaging in tender damsels who fall in love; all these derived an added lustre from the parchment face of sixty, agonizing for a blush and striving to torture the indurated muscles into an expression of sentimentality. With all a woman's dexterity would she play off one of her favorites against another, and so admirably equalize her tokens of regard that each had just enough of hope to save him from despair, and quite enough of fear to stimulate him to renewed devotion. With a jealousy as cruel as the grave, she allowed no man about her to bestow the affections of his nature upon an object worthy of them, but with lynx-eyed vigilance tracked him in his love, and construed it into an insult to herself. Envious of her own sex, if a lady of the court acquitted herself

well in the lively dance, it was the royal pleasure to enter the lists in a saltatory contest, and the agility of youth yielded the palm to the stately dignity of sixty-nine years, walking with becoming gravity through the slower paces of a minuet. Vindictive when the slightest personal reflection had been made, the fate of Essex (favorite though he was) was sealed from the unfortunate moment when, sick of her caprices, he remarked that her counsels were as crooked as her carcase.' Treacherous toward her rival, the unhappy queen of Scots, the policy of state which called for her murder was none the less acceptable because it gratified also the envy that sickened at her beauty.

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Such was Elizabeth, and such the strange intermingling of kingly qualities and womanly weaknesses that made her, as Cecil said, "more than a man and less than a woman."

The next character in importance to the queen was the sagacious and wary Burleigh. A more unimaginative creature than William Cecil, perhaps, never lived. A heart less likely by its generous impulses to mislead the judgment never beat in a human bosom. Spenser, the poet, came recommended to him by his royal mistress herself; he had no sympathy with the beautiful creations of his fancy, and treated him with neglect. Military reputation he valued at no more than he could find in the tangible results of a victory. He estimated the genius of a commander by the security the country derived from his conquests, or the coin they brought into her coffers. Calm and taciturn in every condition of state affairs, with a judgment imperturbably cool, and a rigidity of muscle that never betrayed the slightest feeling, he swayed the destinies of England for years in one of the most trying times of her history, and from first to last possessed the confidence and respect of one of the most capricious old women that ever fancied herself lovely. Elizabeth as little thought of flattering Burleigh into a dream of love, or binding him to her interests by the occasional affectation of tenderness, as if he had been chiseled out of marble. This was a game to play with such spirits as Essex and Leicester; but Burleigh was much too sagacious to permit her majesty to think it possible that he knew there was any such thing as love. His abilities made him indispensable: he was aware of it, yet never acted as if he thought so.