de it Britannia's realm,
was a story which he loved to tell. "The young King," Henry VIII.,
"like a wise man, turned his first attention to the broad ditch, as
he called the British Channel, which formed the natural defence of
the kingdom." It was "the secret determined policy of Spain to
destroy the English fleet, pilots, masters, and sailors, by means of
the Inquisition." In 1562, according to Cecil, more than twenty
British subjects had been burnt at the stake in Spain for heresy,
and more than two hundred were starving in Spanish prisons. There
was work for Hawkins and Drake. They were both Devonshire men, like
Raleigh.

'Twas ever the way with good Queen Bess,
Who ruled as well as a mortal can,
When she was stogged, and the country in a mess,
To send for a Devonshire man.

Spain paid heavily for the persecution of British sailors. In his
fifth lecture, Parties in the State, Froude read with dramatic
emphasis, and in a singularly impressive manner, the application of
a seaman to Elizabeth for leave to attack Philip's men-of-war off
the banks of Newfoundland. "Give me five vessels, and I will go out
and sink them all, and the galleons shall rot in Cadiz Harbour for
want of hands to sail them. But decide, Madam, and decide quickly.
Time flies, and will not return. The wings of man's life are plumed
with the feathers of death." When he uttered these tragic words,
Froude paused, and looked up, and it seemed to those who heard him
as if he felt that the time of his own departure was at hand.
Elizabeth herself was never moved by sentiment, and final vengeance
on Spain had to wait for the Armada, with which these lectures, like
the History, conclude. The consequences he left to others who had
more years before them than he himself. He loved to dwell on the
glories of seamen, especially Devonshire seamen, whose descendants
he had known from his boyhood. The open sea and the open air, the
stars and the waves, were akin to him. His companions sometimes
thought that he cared too little for the perils of the deep. A lady
who went boating with him, and hazarded the opinion that they would
be drowned, got no warmer comfort than "Very likely," which struck
her as grim. Probably he knew that there was no danger. He was
accustomed to storms, and rather enjoyed them than otherwise. His
lectures on the Elizabethan heroes of the sea had a fascination for
young Englishmen which no historical discourses ever surpassed.

These sea-t