BY MRS. LEW. WALLACE.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
he most illustrious name connected with London Tower—high over king, priest, or prince—is the name of Raleigh. There at four different times he was sent, not so much prisoner of England as of Spain. He never lay in the lonesome cell in the crypt called his. His longest term was in the grim fortress Bloody Tower, where his undaunted spirit taught the world
"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage."
GARDEN INSIDE THE TOWER, WHERE RALEIGH WALKED.
He was allowed the freedom of the garden, with a little lodge for a study—a hen-house of lath and plaster, where he experimented with drugs and chemicals, studied medicine and ship-building, kept his crucibles and apparatus, and the near terrace he paced up and down through weary years is to this day called Raleigh's Walk.
It was in the reign of King James the First—the cruel and cowardly—and never in his peerless prime was Raleigh greater than in the fourteen years that sentence of death hung over his head. His prison was a court to which men crowded with delight. Queen Anne sent gracious messages to him, and Prince Henry rode down from Whitehall to hear the old sailor tell of green isles with waving palms like beckoning hands, hints of wonderful plumage, hissing serpents in tropic jungles, barbarian cities built of precious stones, and of rivers running over sands of gold, all waiting for the English conqueror to come and make them his own.
After a morning of high converse the Prince cried out, "No man but my father would keep such a bird in such a cage," and when the young listener fell ill the Queen would have him take nothing but Raleigh's cordial, which, she said, had saved her life.