the good commander as he refused to leave the Squirrel, though it was so small and was overcharged with artillery and other warlike freight which made its safety in the Atlantic tempests that were to be encountered in a September voyage, very doubtful. With what feeling do they speak his words again as he said, "I will not forsake my little company going homewards with whom I have passed so many storms and perils." I hear them tell how the voyage progressed until the ninth of September came, the fatal day when the Squirrel was near cast away; when they saw Gilbert sitting with the good Book in his hand, and, as they approached near, heard him say, "We are as near heaven by sea as by land." I think their voices dropped as they told the breathless group about them that at about twelve of the clock that same ninth of September, being Monday, suddenly the lights of the Squirrel went out, "as it were in a moment," and the watch on the Golden Hind shouted that the general was cast away, which was, alas, too true, "for that moment the Squirrel was devoured and swallowed up of the sea!"

Now let us turn to our Longfellow, and read:

He sat upon the deck,

The Book was in his hand;

"Do not fear! Heaven is as near,"

He said, "By water as by land!"

This heroic adventurer has not a little connection with the story I am to tell, for he was a half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, who fitted out his fleet, and who sent out the colony that was lost, and as he was himself lost exactly three hundred years ago this very month in which I am writing, a vision of him will force itself upon mẹ. He was one of the old Pathfinders, albeit one who failed in his effort, which was to find a passage to Asia around the north of our continent. The passage has not yet been found, and at this moment the papers are discussing the subject with little more prospect of solving the tragic problem than there was in the days of Queen Elizabeth, who gave our Gilbert on the eve of his departure from England, a golden anchor as a token of her regard.

The next scene that comes to me this morning is one in which the queen is prominent, Raleigh

had been spending some time in Ireland, where he had heard a part of Spenser's Faerie Queene read by its author, who had been dissuaded from giving it to the world by the criticisms of some of his friends who did not fancy rhymed verses. He brought Spenser and his poem to London, and soon the literary world was welcoming a new light whom critics have never since tired of calling the most poetic of all his tribe. You have all heard of the scene when Raleigh brought himself to his sovereign's notice. She was on a walk, and came to a place where the mud of the way threatened to soil her fine clothes. Such places cannot have been few in those early days, for good roads are things that our ancestors did not know even in favored England, and in England's capital. As the queen hesitated and as her other courtiers did not see how to overcome the difficulty, the new-comer proved the man for the occasion, and his gorgeous cloak fell into the mud before his sovereign to serve as a foot-cloth. The action was an inspiration, and lifted the hero to a place of prominence in the court. Perhaps it led to the