Historic Boyhoods. Rupert Sargent Holland

would I climb, yet fear I to fall."

      Elizabeth learned who was author of the writing, and scratched the answer underneath:

      "If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all."

      Raleigh had no fear whatever of falling, but a becoming modesty sat well upon him. The Queen remembered the young man now for these two qualities, his gallantry and his becoming modesty, and saw to it that a man of such spirit should be kept at court. The ardent boy of Devon, the restless Oxford student, the wild Huguenot trooper, had grown to be a man worthy of notice.

      He was now, as Walter Scott pictures him in "Kenilworth," the young seeker after royal favor, graceful, slender, restless, somewhat supercilious, with a sonnet ever ready on his lips to delight his friends or an epigram to sting his enemies.

      We shall see him turn his many talents to great uses. He fell to planning voyages across the Atlantic to discover and settle parts of North America much as Sir Humphrey Gilbert had done, and as another young man about court, Sir Francis Drake, was doing. From the Queen, and from one noble or another who was interested in his marvelous schemes, he obtained the money to fit out several expeditions. Each in turn landed near what is now the Roanoke River, and each brought back rich gifts to the great English Queen. Among other things the explorer saw the Indians smoking a dried leaf called tobacco, tried the custom, liked it, and brought it back with him to England.

      Raleigh had a stroke of genius when he named his colony Virginia, in honor of Elizabeth the Virgin Queen. It pleased her to think that a great empire in the western world should be named for her. She gave Raleigh whatever he asked, making him practically governor of all the English domain in America, and for a long time Virginia was supposed to cover even part of what later became New England. He started to colonize the land, but his colonies did not succeed, and he lost all the money he put into them. Nevertheless his Virginian scheme brought him a great deal of fame, which he now craved, and kept London talking of him.

      London was soon to talk still more about this daring, brave, and brilliant Westcountryman. The prophecy of the old sailor at Budleigh Salterton Bay came true, and for a brief time all England held its breath while the famous Spanish fleet, called the Armada, bore down upon her coast. Then all over the country gentlemen of fortune manned ships and put to sea, but especially the men of Devon, of Somerset, and Cornwall, counties famed for their sailors.

      Among these men was Raleigh; his advice was eagerly sought by the Queen's ministers, and when it came to the actual Channel fighting he made one of many gallant captains. The great Armada came to grief upon the English coast, and Raleigh had added another to his record of achievements.

      Having been courtier, colonizer, warrior, Raleigh now blossomed forth as a poet, and became a friend and patron of Edmund Spenser. He had much skill in verse, and he was never lacking in imagination. But his real talents did not lie in that direction, and as in so many other things, he soon found himself distracted elsewhere.

      The story of Raleigh's manhood belongs to history. Turn to tales of Elizabeth's court and you will find his name on almost every page. Now he is high in favor, braving it with the great Earl of Leicester, now down upon his luck, locked in some royal prison, writing verses to his many friends. His was a strange career; at one time there was no man in England whose favor was more sought, yet at the end he died upon the scaffold charged with treason. Time proved him guiltless of the charge, and almost at once the English people began to realize how great a light had been extinguished.

      Through all his varying career he himself was the same brave, dreamy, ambitious man, the perfect type of that age which we call the Elizabethan. He could not stay in his native land of Devon; much as he loved its moorland and its bays, he had to listen to the call of London and the sea, and follow where their voices led him. Each way the road was set with many strange adventures, but he met and passed through them all with the high spirits that were part of his age. His courage never failed him, nor his joy in fighting his way to fortune with his own sharp wits.