me; where seeing his numbers thinned by
sickness and hardship, and his plans baffled by dissentions and
insubordination, he found it necessary to abandon his original design of
crossing the South Sea, and resolved to undertake the voyage to China by
the Cape of Good Hope. First, however, he was fatally prevailed upon to
return to the coast of Brazil, where he lost many men in rash attempts
against various towns, which expecting his attacks were now armed for
their defence, and a still greater number by desertion. Baffled in all
his designs, worn out with fatigue, anxieties, and chagrin, this brave
but unfortunate adventurer breathed his last far from England on the
wide ocean, and so obscurely that even the date of his death is unknown.

At this period, a peculiar education was regarded as not more necessary
to enable a gentleman to assume the direction of a naval expedition than
the command of a troop of horse; and it is probable that even by
Cavendish, whose exploits we read with amazement, but a very slender
stock of maritime experience was possessed when he first embarked on
board the vessel in which he had undertaken to circumnavigate the globe.
He was the third son of a Suffolk gentleman of large estate; came early
to court; and having there consumed his patrimony in the fashionable
magnificence of the time, suddenly discovered within himself sufficient
courage to attempt the reparation of his broken fortunes by that
favorite resource, the plunder of the Spanish settlements. On his return
from his first voyage he sailed up the Thames in a kind of triumph,
displaying a top-sail of cloth of gold, and making ostentation of the
profit rather than the glory of the enterprise. He appears to have been
equally deficient in the enlightened prudence which makes an essential
feature of the great commander, and in that lofty disinterestedness of
motive which constitutes the hero; but in the activity, the enterprise,
the brilliant valor, which now form the spirit of the English navy, he
had few equals and especially few predecessors; and amongst the founders
of its glory the name of Cavendish is therefore worthy of a conspicuous
and enduring place.

By the failure of the late attempt to seat don Antonio on the throne of
Portugal, the sovereignty of Philip II. over that country and its
dependencies had finally been established; and in consequence its trade
and settlements in the East offered a fair and tempting prize to the
am