other of human reason; but the government of the world, the administration of its affairs, and the more secret divine judgments, sound harsh and dissonant to human ears or human judgment; and though this ignorance be justly rewarded with asses' ears, yet they are put on and worn, not openly, but with great secrecy, nor is the deformity of the thing seen or observed by the vulgar.

We must not find it strange if no amours are related of Pan besides his marriage with Echo; for nature enjoys itself, and in itself all other things. He that loves desires enjoyment, but in profusion there is no room for desire; and therefore Pan, remaining content with himself, has no passion unless it be for discourse: which is well shadowed out by Echo or talk; or, when it is more accurate, by Syrinx or writing. But Echo makes a most excellent wife for Pan, as being no other than genuine philosophy, which faithfully repeats his words, or only transcribes exactly as nature dictates; thus representing the true image and reflection of the world without adding a tittle.

It tends also to the support and perfection of Pan or nature to be without offspring; for the world generates in its parts, and not in the way of a whole, as wanting a body external to itself wherewith to generate.

Lastly for the supposed or spurious prattling daughter of Pan, it is an excellent addition to the fable, and aptly represents the talkative philosophies that have at all times been stirring, and filled the world with idle tales, being ever barren, empty, and servile; though sometimes, indeed, diverting and entertaining, and sometimes again troublesome and importunate.

SIR WALTER RALEGH.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

SIR WALTER RALEGH, the younger son of a Devonshire Squire of small fortune but ancient lineage, was born in 1552. At the age of fifteen he became a Commoner of Oriel College, Oxford, where he resided two or three years, but left the University without taking a degree. In the year 1569 he went to France, having enlisted in a company of gentlemen volunteers raised by his kinsman, Henry Champernon, to aid the French Protestants in their resistance to the persecution of the League.

He himself has left it on record that he was present at the disastrous battle of Moncontour; and it is probable that he was in Paris during the Bartholomew massacre, and very possibly found shelter, like Sir P. Sidney, in the house of the English Ambassador.

After a very short sojourn in England, he took service under the Prince of Orange; and, like so many other gallant Englishmen of the time, aided in the struggle of the Netherlanders against the intolerable tyranny of Spain.

In 1580 we find him serving in Ireland under Lord Grey de Wilton and the Earl of Ormond; and it was during his stay in that country that he became intimate with the poet Spenser, to whose genius he has done homage in a beautiful sonnet, called A Vision upon the Faerie Queene. On his return to England he was introduced at Court, probably by the Earl of Leicester, and very soon attracted to himself the favourable regard of Elizabeth, always prompt to do honour to heroism, genius, varied accomplishments, and a gallant bearing. The story of Ralegh spreading his cloak over a muddy spot in the Queen's path is well known, and is sufficiently characteristic of him to carry with it every appearance of truth.

Shortly afterward he turned his attention to maritime discovery and colonization. Under letters patent from the Queen he fitted out an expedition, and made more than one attempt to plant a settlement in Virginia. He also associated himself with his half-brother, Sir Adrian Gilbert, in an enterprise for the discovery of a north-west passage.

He bore his part in the preparations made to give a meet reception to the Invincible Armada, and was afterwards engaged in several expeditions against the Spaniards; amongst others, in that against Cadiz under the command of the Earl of Essex.

Once or twice his Court-favour suffered a partial eclipse; and there is reason to think that the Earl of Essex exerted his influence with the Queen to his disadvantage.

The accession of James I., however, was fatal to all his hopes of honour or advancement. James was from the first prejudiced against him, and the ill offices of the Secretary, Cecil, made these prejudices still stronger.

He was accused of entering into correspondence with Spain, and of conspiring in a plot with Lord Cobham and others to destroy the King and his progeny, and to put the Lady Arabella Stuart on the throne. He was brought to trial in 1603. The trial is especially remarkable for the rude and brutal behaviour manifested towards Ralegh by the Attorney-General, Sir Edward Coke, and for the shameless way in which the evidence and arguments of the accused were suppressed or set aside. In spite of a most spirited and eloquent defence, Ralegh was found guilty, and condemned to death. The sentence was not, however, immediately carried out. Ralegh was removed to the Tower, and continued a State-prisoner for nearly thirteen years. At the end of this time he made suit to be permitted to conduct an expedition to Guiana, which, twenty years before, he had himself discovered and taken possession of in the name of the Queen of England. His application was successful; but the expedition, unhappily, proved a failure, and on his return he was again arrested and brought to the scaffold. There can be no doubt that the appointment of Ralegh to the command of the expedition was a condoning of the charges before alleged against him, and on which he had been condemned. But the mean and cowardly King was anxious to propitiate Spain, and Ralegh was the sacrifice demanded by the Spanish Ambassador, as the condition of amity and alliance. Thus perished, in 1618, one of the noblest Englishmen that "ever lived in the tide of times;" the last of that grand fellowship of Elizabethan Admirals whose prowess struck such deadly blows at the representatives and champions of Popery and Despotism.

WORKS.

Sir Walter Ralegh is entitled to no mean place amongst the minor poets of his age. His poetry consists of sonnets and short lyrical pieces. It is occasionally deformed by the conceits and extravagances characteristic of the time, but nevertheless abounds with elevated thought and earnest feeling. The language is correct and refined, and the verse often flows with smoothness and graceful

ease.

It is, however, as a prose writer that Ralegh is most eminent, and his great

work, on which his fame may well be permitted to rest, is his History of the World. The first part only was ever written, bringing the narrative down to the conquest of the Macedonian kingdom by the Romans. The design, indeed, was from the first too extensive for the opportunities and powers of a single writer, however endowed with learning or favoured with leisure; and we cannot but wonder that Ralegh, whose life was so active and so full of adventure, should ever have found time to accumulate the stores of information which are exhibited in his noble work. It is to be regretted, also, that so much of the work is taken up with Jewish records and rabbinical traditions; for it necessarily follows that a good deal of the matter is either already narrated with every advantage of style and authenticity in the books of the Old Testament, or is unworthy of being narrated at all. That part of the History, however, which refers to Greece and Rome is entitled to high praise. It does not, indeed, in its investigations and positions, come up to the standard of modern historical criticism; but it abundantly exhibits the marks of research, scholarship, large views, knowledge of human nature, and a statesman-like insight into public affairs. Indeed it is the thought and spirit which pervade it, that give its special merit to the History of the World. It is such a work as could only have been written by one who was at once scholar, soldier, politician, and man of the world. It abounds with wise and profound reflections. It is full of the gatherings of observation and "old experience." It is a treasure-house of political axioms and moral apothegms. It is bold, manly, independent, and yet elevated and reverential in tone. It begins with a devout recognition of an all-controlling Providence; and it closes with a sublime apostrophe to that "cloquent, just, and mighty Death," who is the arbiter of all earthly things.

The style, again, is worthy of the sentiments. No better, more racy, or more vigorous English is to be found. If it has not the neatness and the grace of Addison's prose, it has ten times the strength. It is Saxon, pointed, idiomatic. There is just enough of the flavour of the olden time about it to give it an irregular and venerable character, like an old Gothic interior. It abounds with terse phrases and picturesque turns of expression; and its direct and manly strain is warmed with the colours of a bright imagination. It is, in short, the style that seems most naturally to belong to the chivalrous, romantic, adventurous, and yet practical "age of Elizabeth."

Besides the History of the World, Ralegh left behind him several miscellaneous treatises in prose. Amongst these is an account of his voyage in search of Guiana, dedicated to the Lord Admiral and to Cecil; and a tract characterized by much practical wisdom, entitled, Instruction to his Son and to Posterity.

EXTRACT.

THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

THE FLOURISHING ESTATE OF THEBES.

SECTION I.

How Thebes and Athens joined together against Sparta-How the Athenians made peace for themselves and others, out of which the Thebans were excluded-The battle of Leuctra, and beginning of the Theban greatness.

The Lacedaemonians were men of great resolution, aud of much gravity in all their proceedings; but one dishonourable rule they held, that 'all respects withstanding the commodity of Sparta were to be neglected: the practice of which doctrine, even by the best and wisest of them, did greatly blemish that estate; but when it was put in execution by insufficient, over-weening men, it seldom failed to bring upon them, instead of profit unjustly expected, both shame and loss. And so it befell them in these enterprises of Phoebidas upon the castle of Thebes, and Sphodrias upon the Piraeus; for howsoever Agesilaus did spoil the country about Thebes, in which he spent two summers, yet the diligence of the Thebans repaired all, who by the good success of some attempts grew stronger than they were at the first.

The Athenians likewise began to look abroad, sailing to the isle of Corcyra, where they ordered things at their pleasure, and, having in some fights at sea prevailed, began, as in the Peloponnesian war, to surround Peloponnesus with a navy; 2afflicting so the Lacedaemonians, that had not the Thebans by their insolency wearied their friends, and caused them to seek for peace, it had been very likely that the course of this war should have soon come to a good end; which, nevertheless, being prosecuted by the Thebans (who opposed at once both these two great 3estates) left the city of Sparta as much dejected as the beginning found it proud and tyrannous. But the Athenians perceiving how Thebes encroached every day upon her weak neighbours, not sparing such as had been dependants upon Athens, and finding themselves, whilst engaged in such a war, unable to relieve their complaining friends, resolved to settle the affairs of Greece, by renewing that form of peace which Antalcidas had brought from the