church pillars, does the same by such characters as Raleigh's. After
each fresh examination, some fresh count in the hundred-headed
indictment breaks down. The truth is, that as people begin to
believe more in nobleness, and to gird up their loins to the doing of
noble deeds, they discover more nobleness in others. Raleigh's
character was in its lowest nadir in the days of Voltaire and Hume.
What shame to him? For so were more sacred characters than his.
Shall the disciple be above his master? especially when that disciple
was but too inconsistent, and gave occasion to the uncircumcised to
blaspheme? But Cayley, after a few years, refutes triumphantly
Hume's silly slanders. He is a stupid writer: but he has sense
enough, being patient, honest, and loving, to do that.

Mr. Fraser Tytler shovels away a little more of the dirt-heap; Mr.
Napier clears him (for which we owe him many thanks), by simple
statement of facts, from the charge of having deserted and neglected
his Virginia colonists; Humboldt and Schomburgk clear him from the
charge of having lied about Guiana; and so on; each successive writer
giving in generally on merest hearsay to the general complaint
against him, either from fear of running counter to big names, or
from mere laziness, and yet absolving him from that particular charge
of which his own knowledge enables him to judge. In the trust that I
may be able to clear him from a few more charges, I write these
pages, premising that I do not profess to have access to any new and
recondite documents. I merely take the broad facts of the story from
documents open to all; and comment on them as every man should wish
his own life to be commented on.

But I do so on a method which I cannot give up; and that is the Bible
method. I say boldly that historians have hitherto failed in