xcited the people's attention to America more eagerly than ever.
Among those who were attracted to the subject, was a British gentleman,
whose character and misfortunes have always engaged my sincere
admiration.

Sir Walter Raleigh was the natural offspring of the remarkable age in
which he lived. We owe him our profoundest respect, for it was Sir
Walter who gave the first decided impulse to our race's beneficial
enjoyment of this continent. It was his fortune to live at a time of
great and various action. The world was convulsed with the throes of a
new civilization, and the energy it exhibited was consequent upon its
long repose. It was an age of transition. It was an age of coat and
corselet--of steel and satin--of rudeness and refinement,--in which the
antique soldier was melting into the modern citizen. It was the twilight
of feudalism. Baronial strongholds were yielding to municipal
independence. Learning began to teach its marvels to the masses; warfare
still called chivalrous men to the field; a spirited queen, surrounded
by gallant cavaliers, sat on a dazzling throne; adventurous commerce
armed splendid navies and nursed a brood of hardy sailors; while the
mysterious New World invited enterprise to invade its romantic and
golden depths. It was peculiarly an age of thought and action; and is
characterized by a vitality which is apparent to all who recollect its
heroes, statesmen, philosophers and poets.

Sir Walter Raleigh was destined, by his deeds and his doom, to bring
this northern continent, which we are now enjoying, into prominent
notice. He was the embodiment of the boyhood of our new world. In early
life he had been a soldier, but the drift of his genius led him into
statesmanship. He was a well known favorite of the Virgin Queen. A
spirit of adventure bore him across the Atlantic, where, if the occasion
had offered, he would have rivalled Cortez in his courageous hardihood,
and outstripped him in his lukewarm humanity. He became a courtier; and,
mingling in the intrigues of the palace, according to the morals of the
age, was soon too great a favorite with his sovereign to escape the
dislike of men who beheld his sudden rise with envy. From the palace he
passed to prison; and, scorning the idleness which would have rusted so
active an intellect, he prepared that remarkable History of the World,
wherein he concentrated a mass of rare learning, curious investigation,
and subtle thought, which demonstrate