e world in
which he had bustled so effectively, bequeathing to posterity a classic
memorial of near a half century of hard fighting, written, one might
almost imagine, in his demi-pique saddle. But that most genial, valiant,
impracticable, reckless, fascinating hero of romance, the Earl of
Essex--still a youth although a veteran in service--was in the
spring-tide of favour and glory, and was to command the land-forces now
assembled at Plymouth. That other "corsair"--as the Spaniards called
him--that other charming and heroic shape in England's chequered
chronicle of chivalry and crime--famous in arts and arms, politics,
science, literature, endowed with so many of the gifts by which men
confer lustre on their age and country, whose name was already a part of
England's eternal glory, whose tragic destiny was to be her undying
shame--Raleigh, the soldier, sailor, scholar, statesman, poet, historian,
geographical discoverer, planter of empires yet unborn--was also present,
helping to organize the somewhat chaotic elements of which the chief
Anglo-Dutch enterprise for this year against--the Spanish world-dominion
was compounded.

And, again, it is not superfluous to recal the comparatively slender
materials, both in bulk and numbers, over which the vivid intelligence
and restless energy of the two leading Protestant powers, the Kingdom and
the Republic, disposed. Their contest against the overshadowing empire,
which was so obstinately striving to become the fifth-monarchy of
history, was waged by land: and naval forces, which in their aggregate
numbers would scarce make a startling list of killed and wounded in a
single modern battle; by ships such that a whole fleet of them might be
swept out of existence with half-a-dozen modern broadsides; by weapons
which would seem to modern eyes like clumsy toys for children. Such was
the machinery by which the world was to be lost and won, less than three
centuries ago. Could science; which even in that age had made gigantic
strides out of the preceding darkness, have revealed its later miracles,
and have presented its terrible powers to the despotism which was seeking
to crush all Christendom beneath its feet, the possible result might have
been most tragical to humanity. While there are few inventions in morals,
the demon Intellect is ever at his work, knowing no fatigue and scorning
contentment in his restless demands upon the infinite Unknown. Yet moral
truth remains unchanged, g