founders of our colonial empire. The English merchantmen before his time
had been satisfied with the determination to grasp the wealth of the New
World as it came home to Spain; it had not occurred to them to compete
with the great rival at the fountain-head of riches. Even men like Drake
and Frobisher had been content with a policy of forbidding Spain, as the
poet Wither said, "to check our ships from sailing where they please."
South America was already mainly in Spanish hands, but North America was
still open to invasion. It was Raleigh's half-brother, Sir Humphrey
Gilbert, who first thought of planting an English settlement in what is
now the United States, in 1578. But Gilbert had "no luck at sea," as
Queen Elizabeth observed, and it was Raleigh who, in 1584, took up the
scheme of colonisation. He did not drop it until the death of Elizabeth,
when, under the east wind of the new _régime_, the blossom of his
colonial enterprises flagged.

The motion for the ceremony of to-day originated with the authorities of
an important American city, which proudly bears the name of our
adventurer. The earliest settlement in what are now the United States
was made at Roanoke, in Virginia, on a day which must always be
prominent in the annals of civilisation, August 17th, 1585. But this
colony lasted only ten months, and it was not until nearly two years
later that the fourth expedition which Raleigh sent out succeeded in
maintaining a perilous foothold in the new country. This was the little
trembling taper to which his own name was given, the twinkling spark
which is now the flourishing city of Raleigh in North Carolina. We may
well marvel at the pertinacity with which Sir Walter persisted, in the
face of innumerable difficulties, in sending out one colonising fleet
after another, although, contrary to common legend, he himself never set
foot in North America. It was fortunate that at this period of his
career he was wealthy, for the attempts to plant settlements in the vast