which make every one concerned in conquering them worthy of the
gallows; and the right is only that of the thief to the purse, whose
owner he has murdered. But as for the rest--Why the Spaniard has not
colonised, even explored, one-fifth of the New World, not even one-
fifth of the coast. Is the existence of a few petty factories, often
hundreds of miles apart, at a few river-mouths to give them a claim
to the whole intermediate coast, much less to the vast unknown tracts
inside? We will try that. If they appeal to the sword, so be it.
The men are treacherous robbers; we will indemnify ourselves for our
losses, and God defend the right.

So argued the English; and so sprung up that strange war of
reprisals, in which, for eighteen years, it was held that there was
no peace between England and Spain beyond the line, i.e., beyond the
parallel of longitude where the Pope's gift of the western world was
said to begin; and, as the quarrel thickened and neared, extended to
the Azores, Canaries, and coasts of Africa, where English and
Spaniards flew at each other as soon as seen, mutually and by common
consent, as natural enemies, each invoking God in the battle with
Antichrist.

Into such a world as this goes forth young Raleigh, his heart full of
chivalrous worship for England's tutelary genius, his brain aflame
with the true miracles of the new-found Hesperides, full of vague
hopes, vast imaginations, and consciousness of enormous power. And
yet he is no wayward dreamer, unfit for this work-day world. With a
vein of song 'most lofty, insolent, and passionate,' indeed unable to
see aught without a poetic glow over the whole, he is eminently
practical, contented to begin at the beginning that he may end at the
end; one who could 'toil terribly,' 'who always laboured at the