ildest dreams; and see brave sights, and do brave deeds,
which no man has since the foundation of the world. Thou too shalt face
invaders stronger and more cruel far than Dane or Norman, and bear thy
part in that great Titan strife before the renown of which the name of
Salamis shall fade away!

Mr. Oxenham came that evening to supper as he had promised: but as
people supped in those days in much the same manner as they do now, we
may drop the thread of the story for a few hours, and take it up again
after supper is over.

"Come now, Dick Grenville, do thou talk the good man round, and I'll
warrant myself to talk round the good wife."

The personage whom Oxenham addressed thus familiarly answered by a
somewhat sarcastic smile, and, "Mr. Oxenham gives Dick Grenville" (with
just enough emphasis on the "Mr." and the "Dick," to hint that a liberty
had been taken with him) "overmuch credit with the men. Mr. Oxenham's
credit with fair ladies, none can doubt. Friend Leigh, is Heard's great
ship home yet from the Straits?"

The speaker, known well in those days as Sir Richard Grenville,
Granville, Greenvil, Greenfield, with two or three other variations, was
one of those truly heroical personages whom Providence, fitting always
the men to their age and their work, had sent upon the earth whereof it
takes right good care, not in England only, but in Spain and Italy, in
Germany and the Netherlands, and wherever, in short, great men and great
deeds were needed to lift the mediaeval world into the modern.

And, among all the heroic faces which the painters of that age have
preserved, none, perhaps, hardly excepting Shakespeare's or Spenser's,
Alva's or Farina's, is more heroic than that of Richard Grenville, as it
stands in Prince's "Worthies of Devon;" of a Spanish type, perhaps
(or more truly speaking, a Cornish), rather than an English, with just
enough of the British element in it to give delicacy to its massiveness.
The forehead and whole brain are of extraordinary loftiness, and
perfectly upright; the nose long, aquiline, and delicately pointed;
the mouth fringed with a short silky beard, small and ripe, yet firm
as granite, with just pout enough of the lower lip to give hint of that
capacity of noble indignation which lay hid under its usual courtly calm
and sweetness; if there be a defect in the face, it is that the eyes are
somewhat small, and close together, and the eyebrows, though delicately
arched, and, without a