ere feudal barbarism.

Youth and adventurousness were not the only notes of the Renaissance,
nor the only ones which we shall see affecting the history of America.
Another note was pride, and with that pride in its reaction against the
old Christian civilization went a certain un-Christian scorn of poverty
and still more of the ugliness and ignorance which go with poverty; and
there reappeared--to an extent at least, and naturally most of all where
the old religion had been completely lost--that naked Pagan repugnance
which almost refused to recognize a human soul in the barbarian. It is
notable that in these new lands which the Renaissance had thrown open to
European men there at once reappears that institution which had once
been fundamental to Europe and which the Faith had slowly and with
difficulty undermined and dissolved--Slavery.

The English colonies in America owe their first origin partly to the
English instinct for wandering and especially for wandering on the sea,
which naturally seized on the adventurous element in the Renaissance as
that most congenial to the national temper, and partly to the secular
antagonism between England and Spain. Spain, whose sovereign then ruled
Portugal and therefore the Portuguese as well as Spanish colonies,
claimed the whole of the New World as part of her dominions, and her
practical authority extended unchallenged from Florida to Cape Horn. It
would have been hopeless for England to have attempted seriously to
challenge that authority where it existed in view of the relative
strength at that time of the two kingdoms; and in general the English
seamen confined themselves to hampering and annoying the Spanish
commerce by acts of privateering which the Spaniards naturally
designated as piracy. But to the bold and inventive mind of the great
Raleigh there occurred another conception. Spain, though she claimed the
whole American continent, had not in fact made herself mistress of all
its habitable parts. North of the rich lands which supplied gold and
silver to the Spanish exchequer, but still well within the temperate
zone of climate, lay great tracts bordering the Atlantic where no
Spanish soldier or ruler had ever set his foot. To found an English
colony in the region would not be an impossible task like the attempt to
seize any part of the Spanish empire, yet it would be a practical
challenge to the Spanish claim. Raleigh accordingly projected, and
others, entering into hi