rd in the deep for all instruction; multiplicity
of nature for contemplation; to the thirsty Earth fertile moisture;
to distant friends pleasant meeting; to weary persons delightful
refreshing; to studious minds a map of knowledge, a school of
prayer, meditation, devotion, and sobriety; refuge to the
distressed, portage to the merchant, customs to the prince, passage
to the traveller; springs, lakes, and rivers to the Earth. It hath
tempests and calms to chastise sinners and exercise the faith of
seamen; manifold affections to stupefy the subtlest philosopher,
maintaineth (as in Our Island) a wall of defence and watery
garrison to guard the state. It entertains the Sun with vapors, the
Stars with a natural looking-glass, the sky with clouds, the air
with temperateness, the soil with suppleness, the rivers with
tides, the hills with moisture, the valleys with fertility. But why
should I longer detain you? The Sea yields action to the body,
meditation to the mind, and the World to the World, by this art of
arts--Navigation.

Well might this pious Englishman, the Reverend Samuel Purchas, exclaim
with David: _Thy ways are in the Sea, and Thy paths in the great waters,
and Thy footsteps are not known_.

The poets sang of Drake and England, too. Could his 'Encompassment of
All the Worlde' be more happily admired than in these four short lines:

The Stars of Heaven would thee proclaim
If men here silent were.
The Sun himself could not forget
His fellow traveller.

What wonder that after Nombre de Dios and the Pacific, the West Indies
and the Spanish Main, Cadiz and the Armada, what wonder, after this,
that Shakespeare, English to the core, rings out:--

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise;
This fortress built by nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world;
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happy lands:
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

* * * * *

This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.
N