sperate
courses--'witness,' as Richard Hakluyt says, 'twenty tall fellows hanged
last Rochester assizes for small robberies;' and there is an admirable
paper addressed to the Privy Council by Christopher Carlile,
Walsingham's son-in-law, pointing out the possible openings to be made
in or through such plantations for home produce and manufacture.

Far below all such prudential economics and mercantile ambitions,
however, lay a chivalrous enthusiasm which in these dull days we can
hardly, without an effort, realise. The life-and-death wrestle between
the Reformation and the old religion had settled in the last quarter of
the sixteenth century into a permanent struggle between England and
Spain. France was disabled. All the help which Elizabeth could spare
barely enabled the Netherlands to defend themselves. Protestantism, if
it conquered, must conquer on another field; and by the circumstances of
the time the championship of the Reformed faith fell to the English
sailors. The sword of Spain was forged in the gold-mines of Peru; the
legions of Alva were only to be disarmed by intercepting the gold ships
on their passage; and, inspired by an enthusiasm like that which four
centuries before had precipitated the chivalry of Europe upon the East,
the same spirit which in its present degeneracy covers our bays and
rivers with pleasure yachts, then fitted out armed privateers, to sweep
the Atlantic, and plunder and destroy Spanish ships wherever they could
meet them.

Thus, from a combination of causes, the whole force and energy of the
age was directed towards the sea. The wide excitement, and the greatness
of the interests at stake, raised even common men above themselves; and
people who in ordinary times would have been no more than mere seamen,
or mere money-making merchants, appear before us with a largeness and
greatness of heart and mind in which their duties to God and their
country are alike clearly and broadly seen and felt to be paramount to
every other.

Ordinary English traders we find fighting Spanish war ships in behalf of
the Protestant faith. The cruisers of the Spanish Main were full of
generous eagerness for the conversion of the savage nations to
Christianity. And what is even more surprising, sites for colonisation
were examined and scrutinised by such men in a lofty statesmanlike
spirit, and a ready insight was displayed by them into the indirect
effects of a wisely-extended commerce on every highest hu