How can I render to God for all the benefits which He has done unto
me? How can I do a deed the like of which was never done in
England?'

If all this had passed through Walter Raleigh's mind, what could we
say of it, but that it was the natural and rational feeling of an
honourable and right-hearted man, burning to rise to the level which
he knew ought to be his, because he knew that he had fallen below it?
And what right better way of testifying these feelings than to do
what, as we shall see, Raleigh did? What right have we to impute to
him lower motives than these, while we confess that these righteous
and noble motives would have been natural and rational;--indeed, just
what we flatter ourselves that we should have felt in his place? Of
course, in his grand scheme, the thought came in, 'And I shall win to
myself honour, and glory, and wealth,'--of course. And pray, sir,
does it not come in in your grand schemes; and yours; and yours? If
you made a fortune to-morrow by some wisely and benevolently managed
factory, would you forbid all speech of the said wisdom and
benevolence, because you had intended that wisdom and benevolence
should pay you a good percentage? Away with cant, and let him that
is without sin among you cast the first stone.

So Raleigh hits upon a noble project; a desperate one, true: but he
will do it or die. He will leave pleasant Sherborne, and the bosom
of the beautiful bride, and the first-born son, and all which to most
makes life worth having, and which Raleigh enjoys more intensely than
most men; for he is a poet, and a man of strong nervous passions
withal. But, -