s.

The simple majesty of this anecdote can gain nothing from any comment
which we might offer upon it. The crew of a common English ship
organising, of their own free motion, on that wild shore, a judgment
hall more grand and awful than any most elaborate law court, is not to
be reconciled with the pirate theory. Drake, it is true, appropriated
and brought home a million and a half of Spanish treasure, while England
and Spain were at peace. He took that treasure because for many years
the officers of the Inquisition had made free at their pleasure with the
lives and goods of English merchants and seamen. The king of Spain, when
appealed to, had replied that he had no power over the Holy House; and
it was necessary to make the king of Spain, or the Inquisition, or
whoever were the parties responsible, feel that they could not play
their pious pranks with impunity. When Drake seized the bullion at
Panama, he sent word to the viceroy that he should now learn to respect
the properties of English subjects; and he added, that if four English
sailors, who were prisoners in Mexico, were molested, he would execute
2,000 Spaniards and send the viceroy their heads. Spain and England were
at peace, but Popery and Protestantism were at war--deep, deadly, and
irreconcileable.

Wherever we find them, they are still the same. In the courts of Japan
or of China; fighting Spaniards in the Pacific, or prisoners among the
Algerines; founding colonies which by-and-by were to grow into enormous
Transatlantic republics, or exploring in crazy pinnaces the fierce
latitudes of the Polar seas,--they are the same indomitable God-fearing
men whose life was one great liturgy. 'The ice was strong, but God was
stronger,' says one of Frobisher's men, after grinding a night and a day
among the icebergs, not waiting for God to come down and split the ice
for them, but toiling through the long hours, himself and the rest
fending off the vessel with poles and planks, with death glaring at
them out of the rocks. Icebergs were strong, Spaniards were strong, and
storms, and corsairs, and rocks and reefs, which no chart had then
noted--they were all strong; but God was stronger, and that was all
which they cared to know.

Out of the vast number of illustrations it is difficult to make wise
selections, but the attention floats loosely over generalities, and only
individual instances can seize it and hold it fast. We shall attempt to
bring our readers face t