Descended from an ancient and highly respectable family, Walter Raleigh was born in Devonshire, England, in 1552. By the side of his mother, who appears to have been a woman of superior talent, he was step-brother to the celebrated Knights, Sir John. Sir Humphrey, and Sir Adrian Gilbert. The early childhood of Raleigh was spent upon the sea coast, amid the sights and sounds of an element whose constant restlessness furnishes a fitting emblem of his own active character. While yet a mere boy, he was sent to Ovid College, Oxford, where his precocious genius and brilliant wit attracted special notice. Amid the graver studies of his college course, he found great delight in the perusal of books relating to the conquests of the Spaniards in America; a kind of reading which was not without its influence on all his future life. His stay at Oxford must have been short, for we find him at the age of seventeen, joining his kinsman, Henry Champornon, as one of the hundred volunteers sent by Elizabeth to aid the persecuted protestants in France. "It was a gallant company" says a historian of that time, "and many of them rose afterwards to eminence, but the most noted of them all was Walter Raleigh." No period perhaps could have been found more important or more advantageous for a young man just commencing his public career. It was at that eventful period when the Hugenots, under the Prince of Condé and the admiral Coligni, had risen in defence of their religious liberty. The year in which Henry of Navarre began his military course-the year of the battles of Jarnac and Moncontour-the year of the murder of the great Condé and the disastrous defeat of Coligni. In the stirring scenes of that period young Raleigh was an active participator, and though he has left us no means of tracing particularly his personal adventures, we know that he continued in France till after the death of the imbecile butcher, Charles IX, and witnessed, and by a good Providence. escaped the horrible massacre of St. Bartholomew. During all this time, he was brought into contact with some of the greatest generals and statesmen of the age. If Condé and Coligni taught the young Englishman to love the glory of military adventure, the excellent Chancellor L'Hopital and the President De Thon were not without their influence in leading him to cultivate the arts and accomplishments of peace. At this time the mind of Raleigh was strongly directed to America. The seeds sown by the books of Spanish adventure which he had read at the University, did not lie dormant in such a teeming soil. He now became acquainted probably with the discoveries of Verrazani on the coast of this continent, and must have met in the ranks of Coligni some who had been with De Gourgues, or perhaps that bold adventurer himself, after his return from avenging upon the Spaniards their atrocious massacre of the Hugenots at St. Augustine. From these sources Raleigh gathered much information respecting Florida, and the navigation to this western world. So deeply, even at this time, did he become interested in this matter, that he furnished from his own purse the painter, De Morgues, with the means of completing his sketches of scenery in Florida. Before leaving France at the age of twenty three, Raleigh had availed himself of all the advantages which that stirring period afforded to an active and ambitious spirit. He gave himself however but a short season of repose. Philip II. of Spain was still intent upon the subjugation of the Netherlands, and, though the ferocious duke of Alva had been defeated and recalled, the war was conducted by Don John, of Austria. This brilliant and ambitious soldier, flushed with his splendid success against the Turks, had conceived the idea of espousing Mary of Scotland, and in her right of making himself master of the English throne. This alone was wanting to excite in Elizabeth all the fiery blood of Henry the Eighth. She threw off the mask of neutrality, and openly espoused the cause of Protestantism in the Netherlands. Raleigh embarked under Sir John Norris in this expedition. It was the same cause as that in which he had first drawn his sword. It was the struggle between despotism and the rights of conscience-royal power on the one hand, upholding superstition and tyranny, and the people on the other, striving for freedom and for truth. Raleigh, with all his characteristic ardor, engaged on the side of liberty. His attention, however, was not entirely engrossed by the scenes among which he moved. He found leisure to carry on the studies of geography and navigation. He made himself intimately acquainted with the discoveries and conquests of Columbus, Cortez and Pizarro in the new world, and soon embraced an opportunity of engaging in the same wide field of adventure and discovery. The brilliant success which had crowned the Spanish arms in America, the glowing descriptions which voyagers had given of Florida and the Mississippi, the discoveries of the Cabots and others and especially the eager thirst for wealth, which in its fond credulity had turned the earth and stones of America "into silver and 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 barda seen in vision from the top of Snowden, encircling the virgin Queen : Many a baron bold, And gorgeous dames, and state men old 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 profligate 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 |