Then vanished Elizabeth, and a coward king took her place.
"Fourteen years Sir Walter spent in the Tower, of whom Prince Henry would say that no King but his father would keep such a bird in a cage."
But freedom followed, and the scholar turned into the soldier again. Ultimately Spain had her way with her scourge and terror. James ministered to her revenge, and Ralegh perished; "the only man left alive, of note, that had helped to beat the Spaniards in the year 1588."
The favour of the axe was his last, and being asked which way he would dispose himself upon the block, he answered, "So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lieth."
"Authors," adds old Prince, "are perplexed under what topick to place him, whether of statesman, seaman, soldier, chymist, or chronologer; for in all these he did excel. He could make everything he read or heard his own, and his own he would easily improve to the greatest advantage. He seemed to be born to that only which he went about, so dextrous was he in all his undertakings, in Court, camp, by sea, by land, with sword, with pen. And no wonder, for he slept but five hours; four he spent in reading and mastering the best authors; two in a select conversation and an inquisitive discourse; the rest in business."
We may say of him that not only did he write The History of the World, but helped to make it; we may hold of all Devon's mighty sons, this man the mightiest. Fair works have been inspired by his existence, but one ever regrets that Gibbon, who designed a life of Ralegh, was called to relinquish the idea before the immensity of his greater theme.
In the western meadow without the boundary of Hayes Barton there lies a great pool, where a cup has been hollowed to hold the brook. Here, under oak trees, one may sit, mark a clean reflection of the farmhouse upon the water, and regard the window of the birth chamber opening on the western gable of the homestead. Thence the august infant's eyes first drew light, his lungs, the air. He has told us that dear to memory was that snug nook, and many times, while he wandered the world and wrote his name upon the golden scroll, we may guess that the hero turned his thought to these happy valleys and, in the mind, mirrored this haunt of peace.
THE SAD HEATH
