h, that the
quarrel with Spain was felt to be a mortal one. It was England, not its
sovereign, that was instinctively arming, at all points, to grapple with
the great enemy of European liberty. It was the spirit of self-help, of
self-reliance, which was prompting the English nation to take the great
work of the age into its own hands. The mercantile instinct of the nation
was flattered with the prospect of gain, the martial quality of its
patrician and of its plebeian blood was eager to confront danger, the
great Protestant mutiny. Against a decrepit superstition in combination
with an aggressive tyranny, all impelled the best energies of the English
people against Spain, as the embodiment of all which was odious and
menacing to them, and with which they felt that the life and death
struggle could not long be deferred.

And of these various tendencies, there were no more fitting
representatives than Drake and Frobisher, Hawkins and Essex, Cavendish
and Grenfell, and the other privateersmen of the sixteenth century. The
same greed for danger, for gold, and for power, which, seven centuries
before, had sent the Norman race forth to conquer all Christendom, was
now sending its Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman kindred to take possession
of the old world and the new.

"The wind commands me away," said Drake on the 2nd April, 1587; "our ship
is under sail. God grant that we may so live in His fear, that the enemy
may have cause to say that God doth fight for her Majesty abroad as well
as at home."

But he felt that he was not without enemies behind him, for the strong
influence brought to bear against the bold policy which Walsingham
favoured, was no secret to Drake. "If we deserve ill," said he, "let us
be punished. If we discharge our duty, in doing our best, it is a hard
measure to be reported ill by those who will either keep their fingers
out of the fire; or who too well affect that alteration in our government
which I hope in God they shall never live to see." In latitude 40 deg. he
spoke two Zeeland ships, homeward bound, and obtained information of
great warlike stores accumulating in Cadiz and Lisbon. His mind was
instantly made up. Fortunately, the pinnace which the Queen despatched
with orders to stay his hand in the very act of smiting her great
adversary, did not sail fast enough to overtake the swift corsair and his
fleet. Sir Francis had too promptly obeyed the wind, when it "commanded
him away," to receive the