to push his fortunes, as was the custom in those days with
the cadets of illustrious families whose worldly wealth was unequal to
their birth and station, by the chances of court favor, or the readier
advancement of the sword. At this period, Elizabeth was desirous of lending
assistance to the French Huguenots, who had been recently defeated in the
bloody battle of Jarnac, and who seemed to be in considerable peril of
being utterly overpowered by their cruel and relentless enemies the Guises;
while she was at the same time wholly disinclined to involve England in
actual strife, by regular and declared hostilities.

She gave permission, therefore, to Henry Champernon to raise a regiment of
gentlemen volunteers, and to transport them into France. In the number of
these, young Walter Raleigh enrolled, and thenceforth his career may be
said to have commenced; for from that time scarce a desperate or glorious
adventure was essayed, either by sea or land, in which he was not a
participator. In this, his first great school of military valor and
distinction, he served with so much spirit, and such display of gallantry
and aptitude for arms, that he immediately attracted attention, and, on his
return to England in 1570, after the pacification, and renewal of the
edicts for liberty of conscience, found himself at once a marked man.

It seems that, about this time, in connection with Nicholas Blount and
others, who afterward attained to both rank and eminence, Raleigh attached
himself to the Earl of Essex, who at that time disputed with Leicester the
favors, if not the affection, of Elizabeth; and, while in his suite, had
the fortune to attract the notice of that princess by the handsomeness of
his figure and the gallantry of his attire; she, like her father, Henry,
being quick to observe and apt to admire those who were eminently gifted
with the thews and sinews of a man.

A strangely romantic incident was connected with his first rise in the
favor of the Virgin Queen, which is so vigorously and brilliantly described
by another and even more renowned Sir Walter in his splendid romance of
Kenilworth, that it shames us to attempt it with our far inferior pen; but
it is so characteristic of the man and of the times that it may not be
passed over in silence.

Being sent once on a mission--so runs the tale--by his lord to the queen,
at Greenwich, he arrived just as she was issuing in state from the palace
to take her barge, which la