but they were forced to put back soon after setting out. Gilbert went
again in 1583, and reached St. John's, where he erected a pillar
commemorating the English occupation; but he was drowned in a storm on the
way home. Raleigh, who had stayed in England, and had acquired royal favor
and a fortune, remained to carry out, in his own way, the designs which
Gilbert's death had left in suspense. In 1584 he began the work.

Raleigh perhaps deserves to be regarded as the greatest English gentleman
who ever lived. In addition to the learning of his time, he had a towering
genius, indomitable courage and constancy, lofty and generous principles,
far-seeing wisdom, Christian humanity, and a charity that gave and forgave
to the end. He was a courtier and a statesman, a soldier and a sailor, a
merchant and an explorer. His life was one of splendid and honorable
deeds; he was not a talker, and found scant leisure to express himself in
writing; though when he chose to write poetry he approved himself best in
the golden age of English literature; and his "History of the World,"
composed while imprisonment in the Tower prevented him from pursuing more
active employments, is inferior to no other produced up to that time. Such
reverses as he met with in life only spurred him to fresh efforts, and his
successes were magnificent, and conducive to the welfare of the world. He
was a patriot of the highest and purest type; a champion of the oppressed;
a supporter of all worthy enterprises, a patron of literature and art.
Withal, he was full of the warm blood of human nature; he had all the
fire, the tenderness, and the sympathies that may rightly belong to a man.
The mind is astonished in contemplating such a being; he is at once so
close to us, and so much above the human average. King James I. of
England, jealous of his greatness, imprisoned him for twelve years, on a
groundless charge, and finally slew him, at the age of sixty-six, broken
by disease, and saddened, but not soured, by the monstrous ingratitude and
injustice of his treatment. Upon the scaffold, he felt of the edge of the