Sir Walter Raleigh and His Time

It was an immense conception: a glorious one: it stood out so clear: there was no mistake about its being the absolutely right, wise, patriotic thing; and so feasible, too, if R...

Some make much of a letter, supposed to be written about this time by Raleigh to Cecil, bidding Cecil keep down Essex, even crush him, now that he is once down. I do not happen...

Keymis returns with the wreck of his party. The scene between him and Raleigh may be guessed. Keymis has excuse on excuse. He could not get obeyed after young Raleigh’s death: h...

‘TRUTH is stranger than fiction.’ A trite remark. We all say it again and again: but how few of us believe it! How few of us, when we read the history of heroical times and hero...

But there is one bright point at least in the darkness; one on whom Raleigh’s eyes, and those of all England, are fixed in boundless hope; one who, by the sympathy which attract...

English merchantmen, longing for some share in the riches of the New World, go out to trade in Guinea, in the Azores, in New Spain: and are answered by shot and steel. ‘Both pol...

And he will go forth to endure heat, hunger, fever, danger of death in battle, danger of the Inquisition, rack, and stake, in search of El Dorado. What so strange in that? I hav...

So he returns; having written to Cecil the highest praises of Essex, whom he treats with all courtesy and fairness; which those who will may call cunning: we have as good a righ...

As we said, Truth is stranger than fiction. No dramatist dare invent a ‘poetic justice’ more perfect than fell upon the traitor. It is not always so, no doubt. God reserves many...