At Buckland Abbey, in the neighborhood of Crowndale, where Drake was born, the descendants of the family still reside, and myth is busy in converting it all into a monument of the old navigator, or "wayrier," as the country-folk call him. A tree is shown in the park where the conqueror of the Armada took refuge, by climbing, from an enraged wounded stag. There is an old private chapel, which seems to hint that Drake still practiced Catholic rites under his Protestant Queen. His drum and his banner are preserved. The walls are lined with pictures of the Armada, on one of which is the following inscription:

"Upon the defeat of the Spanish Armada a pasqainade was found on a column at Rome, signifying that the Pope would grant indulgences for a thousand years to any one that would indicate to a certainty what was become of the Spanish fleet; whether it was taken up into heaven, or thrust down into Tartarus: suspended in the air, or floating in the sea."

The world hardly yet knows just what became of that brilliant fleet of 130 ships that hovered on the Channel like a silvery deadwreath, and the next moment was scattered on every shore of the northern world; it is known, however, that the storms of Nature did far more than Drake toward its destruction. I have reason to believe that the next volume of Mr. Froude's History will give a strange and new chapter on this subject, and will especially reveal the terrible fate which befell the thirty or forty ships which were stranded on the Irish coast. Little as any civilized generation can sympathize with the aims of the Armada, or regret its destruction, the cruelties with which the Irish people themselves plundered and slew every man of them-each a soldier for the faith and cause of Ireland-are unparalleled among atrocities committed by a whole people.

Sym

be used in such a connection, with the object for which these Spaniards sailed, the Irish resolved themselves into a nation of robbers, and dragged their helpless defenders from the waves only to stab and behead them, apparently for sport, for even that was not necessary in order to take their clothing and jewelry.

ants are prominent on several of the monuments of the nobility, especially those that belong to the reign of Elizabeth, when the possession of negroes was almost essential to the highest aristocratic position. Mr. George Dawson, one of the finest lecturers in England, has pointed out, in an unpublished essay on Sir Francis Drake, good reasons for believing that in Othello Shakspeare meant to portray a negro. When Drake returned from his famous discovery of the Pa-pathizing, so far as so respectable a word can cific, Queen Elizabeth, in knighting him, gave him, as a device on his coat of arms, the figure of a Moor, which meant simply a compliment to the then highly respectable business of negro slave-trading; from which Mr. Dawson deduces that in those days there was no distinction between "Moor" and "Negro" in the English mind. Shakspeare, like others, knew of only one race of blacks, negroes-popularly called "Moors" or "Blackamoors"- and meant to draw one of these in his tragedy. The allusions in the play to Othello's peculiar heels, lips, and other traits generally ascribed to the Negro, but not to the Moor, give force to this criticism. Memorials, relics, and monuments of Drake are met with at every turn throughout Devonshire. At Plymouth tradition points out the spot where his five ships weighed anchor on the 13th of December, 1577, for the famous voyage -illuminated by burning Spanish ships-and that at which, two years later, four of those ships, laden with the gold of California, cast anchor again, and Drake stood on a deck where the Queen was proud to visit him, to partake a banquet, and knight him as he knelt there.

In front of the noble gates of the Plymouth fortress, or "citadel," the sward is still green where Drake was playing at bowls when told that the Armada was in sight, and, as the legend runs, insisted that the game should be finished first and the Spaniards whipped afterward. Some boys were playing ball on the spot when I saw it. But few at Plymouth, however, knew or remembered, amidst these grand stories, one thing which Drake really did of importancehe devised a scheme, and at a heavy expense to himself carried it out, of supplying Plymouth with pure water by a leat running from Dartmoor, about thirty miles distant.

One may sit here, before this ancient portal between England and the world, and dream the Past over again through many hours-seeing ships as on a mirage of history floating out with

ture and Destiny had their own aims, and were busy sending the races of the world to prepare the way for the ages that were to mingle them all in the West into a great human race. Thus they allured the men who were to be moulded into MAN.

Moreover these great voyages were the gymnasium in which Nature was training the sinews of her Anglo-Saxon race for the part it had to play in exploring, colonizing, and afterward emancipating the human race from the despotism and superstition inherited from the far East, whence the elements of it had migrated. I have said that there is little or no historical connection between the Plymouth of the Old and that of the New World; but the philosophical connection is direct. The ship of Drake and the Mayflower were really twins; and the larger room for the race physically which one sought in exploring the Pacific, the other sought morally and religiously in its voyage to New England. The Mayflower was the natural blossom on that sturdy Saxon stem which ages of adventure and struggle had made strong. Advance Drake into a religious era and he becomes stout Miles Standish.

the explorers and traders of the world on board | What brave ships and braver mariners perished of them-Captain Cook, Hawkins, Drake-and through those centuries of illusion ! But Naothers sailing in, bearing, it may be, the gentle savage Pocahontas, or Sir Walter Raleigh coming back (1617) from his unfortunate expedition to Guiana, to be arrested as he touches the shore. Here was the nest wherein was nursed the maritime strength of England; here she fledged and plumed the sail-wings that were to bear her sceptre through all the world. It is strange to think by what illusions the world is led from age to age, and what fatal realities are concealed under these illusions. Four centuries ago the whole world was impelled by the illusion of a Northwestern passage to spiceladen islands whose streams ran over golden sands. On the rough map made by Columbus there is marked "St. Brandon's Isle," which is a memorial of the superstition which helped to keep alive the all-absorbing dream of the age. A great sea-giant, it was believed, had informed St. Brandon of an island in the west made of solid gold set in crystal, and offered to swim to it with a ship in tow; but a storm came on and the giant perished, leaving the navigators to find the golden island as best they could. From this region sailed Cabot until his ship was stopped by land. Up and down he sailed, trying to avoid and sail through this 'land; but it remained obstinately in front of him. At last, wearied out, he went ashore and brought away with him three wild Indians, whom he presented to King Henry VII., who gave him ten pounds for discovering "the new isle." The belief that America was an island lived long in England. The Duke of Newcastle, who administered for all North America for the generation preceding the Revolution, added to his impression that Jamaica was somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea this other, and always addressed his dispatches to "the Isle of New England."

Cabot took his ten pounds from the King and came down here to die at Bristol, a disappointed man. He never forgave the American continent for having been in his way when he was seeking the Northwestern passage. But he was not the only navigator who threw aside with scorn the most important discoveries for the sake of that which did not exist. It was said that the sailors who voyaged with Columbus placed a magnet near his compass so as to divert him from sailing further westward than Cuba; but there is now more reason to believe that his course was warped by the dominant theory. The natives whom he encountered at Cuba told him that due west there was a people who knew many arts; and had he sailed as they pointed we would not now be painfully spelling out, from letters traced in dust, the history of those wonderful civilizations of Peru and Mexico which Columbus would have found at their height. He must also pursue the rainbow with the mythic bag of gold at its endpursue it to bitter disappointment. What navies were crushed and stranded by that theory!

But if there is a world this side of the brave mariners who made this whole region from Bristol to Plymouth classic, one is reminded at every step that there are worlds anterior to them—a world of savage life, and back of that a world of brute forces. No part of England is so rich in scientific interest as Devonshire. So much every geological student knows who has studied the wealth of the formation called "Devonian," since Murchison and Sedgwick distinguished that great sandstone from the "Silurian." This formation, with its treasures of fossil and coral, corresponds to a formation in human knowledge. But the old geologists only went to the threshold of the discoveries which science has since made in this region. The centre of the discoveries to which I now refer is Torquay, and Kent's Cavern thereat.

On

Two hours by train, through a pleasant region, bring one across from Plymouth to this beautiful town-as beautiful in its way as Naples, and sitting on its crescent beach much in the same way. Having arrived early in the morning-too early to call on the eminent man to whom the scientific exploration of the cavern has been intrusted, I wandered for some hours about the embowered lanes for which Devonshire suburbs are famous. one occasion, having walked some distance, forward as I thought, and finding myself close on my starting-point, I remembered an ingenious illustration made by the late Archbishop Whately from an incident in these lanes. gentleman, he said, riding through the deep and shady Devonshire lanes did not reach the place for which he started so soon as he expected, but saw no one of whom he could inquire the right way; nevertheless the increasing number of

A

horses' tracks encouraged him to believe that he was in a frequented road, and on he went. At length a certain familiarity in the objects around him led to a misgiving; and he soon discovered that he had been riding round and round in a circle, the increasing number of tracks being those of his own horse. The prelate illustrated thus the mental career of those who imagine they are making progress, when they are but vehemently moving in a circle and mistaking their own multiplied tracks for those of the march of Humanity.

as long as he could, and losing his voice, he resigned himself to the idea of a terrible death, and, his weary hands releasing their hold, he fell! The distance between his feet and the solid ground was just twelve inches. "If people," said Mr. Froude, "would only have less panic, and more faith in truth, they might often find solid ground under them instead of pitfalls."

My reader has, doubtless, by this time perceived that my story is of the cactus kind-one leaf budding into another-and will not be surAnother ingenious story of this neighborhood prised if Mr. Froude's anecdote reminds me I heard used in a half scientific, half religious that it was in this neighborhood that the very discussion which occurred in a company during remarkable family of which he is a member was a meeting of the British Association. Some reared. The father of the Froudes-the Venpersons having expressed apprehension as to erable R. H. Froude-was Archdeacon of Totthe general skepticism that might follow an nes, and resided, I believe, at Dartmoor. There, unchecked pursuit of certain scientific inqui- at any rate, the historian Anthony Froude was ries, Mr. Froude, the Engineer (brother of the born in 1818. Like nearly all the more thoughthistorian), gave the narrative of a man who had ful scholars who were at Oxford twenty-five years lost his way at night among the moors near Tor- ago, he and his brother (now deceased) came unquay. These moors sometimes lead to preci- der the powerful sway of John Henry Newman, pices, and are not free from pits; this the lost and were High Church enthusiasts. traveler knew, and at every step he was in dead- this time that he wrote "The Lives of the Enly fear of falling into one of these pits. At last glish Saints." In 1847 and 1848 there came his foot slipped downward! He threw up his out those strange books, "The Shadows of the hands and fortunately grasped the branch of a Clouds" and "The Nemesis of Faith," which tree, which extended over the abyss. It was showed that his mind and heart were but girdpitch-dark and he could not see the bank from ing themselves for another kind of journey from which he had fallen; he swung his feet that that on which he had started when he took orway, but no-he could not reach it. Hanging ders as a deacon with Dr. Newman. When by his straining arms over the pit he shouted the latter passed into the Church of Rome Anfor help, but no help came. After struggling thony's brother went with him, but for the fu

It was at

ture historian it was the crumbling of the last temple in which he had sought refuge, and it left above him only the vault of heaven, within him the dome of reason. There was nothing in him that could make a zealot of any kind; so he gave up his orders and his Oxford fellowship and betook himself to the quiet paths of literature. The Oxonian authorities have never ceased to malign and persecute him for the books he wrote while a student there; he never replies, but pursues patiently his own work. He is nearly connected by marriage with Charles Kingsley, and his home at Brompton, in London, is very dear to the circle of fine spirits-Carlyle, Arnold, Palgrave, Spedding, and others who are often found around its hospitable fireside. The brother who became a Catholic died. The other brother, civil engineer, has a beautiful home here at Torquay: he is the youngest of the brothers, but is already widely esteemed as a man of science. They are all remarkably handsome; Anthony, especially, is by all odds the handsomest literary man in London.

a leaf before moral opposition. At the outset of his career Kingsley indulged in some heresy while preaching on a certain occasion in London, when some layman arose in the church and invited all who believed the doctrine of the Church to leave the house. Kingsley was much excited, and denounced as a "liar” any one who should charge him with heresy; but he never recovered from this blow, and has hardly ventured to speak his mind since. Of late years he has completely identified England with Justice and (apparently) the Establishment with Truth, and has merged "muscular Christianity" into Carlyle's worship of Force.

He is far from being a pleasant speaker, his manner being affected and his voice afflicted with a sad stammer; but what he says is always profoundly interesting. Last year he preached to the Volunteers, at their camp near Wimbledon, a discourse about Judah's lionthe lion being the British lion, and the doctrine an apotheosis of war. He was so much excited at one time, his stammer at the same time damming his utterance, that some feared he would It is very notable, by-the-way, how in England fall into apoplexy. The discourse was power--and, measurably, in America-genius runs in ful; but an old reader of his could not forget families: as witness the Napiers, Mackintoshes, how he said in "Alton Locke"-I don't know Frondes, Newmans, Arnolds, Martineaus, Dar- how it stands in the expurgated edition-that wins, Kingsleys. The Kingsleys come from the one of the most inscrutable things on this earth north of Devonshire. An old family of Cheshire to him is a soldier. There would seem to be it was, which in the civil wars had suffered more in his mind, and his brother Henry's also, for its adherence to the cause of the Parliament enough or more than enough of sinew, but a than its most distinguished descendant has suf- lack of bone: what they do and write is not fered from his early Chartist propensities. It organic, and it must pass away. Many of his was probably, however, rather from his mother warmest friends have tried to hold on to their than from "the Kingsleys of Kingsley, in the faith that he would recur to his earlier manliforest of Delamere," that Charles inherited his ness and his "first love." Thomas Hughes noble discontent with the actual, and his im- despaired of him when he found him taking pulsive free thought. Mr. Carlyle told me that sides with the Confederates during the Amerihe remembered visiting the rectory of his father, can War. who was a clergyman, when Charles was but a small lad. He observed then that the dreamy eyes of the mother-a lovely woman-reappeared in the boy, who sat in entire silence during the conversation, evidently drinking in every thing he saw or heard. Carlyle became the hero of Kingsley's boyhood and youth, as he now is of his fiftieth year: that pillar he followed, when it turned its fiery side, into the land of radicalism, and now he has followed its cloudy side back into the land of bondage. The course of many a gifted young Englishman of these times is to be the historic comment on the tremendous action and reaction of Carlyle's great brain. The reaction in Charles Kingsley's case, coincident as it has been with his progress out of poverty to comparative prosperity, has subjected him to many taunts. A popular speaker recently said, "How can we not expect him to smile on the world when the world smiles on him?" My belief is, however, that the change is far more due to his temperament -in which moral timidity is strangely blended with physical pluck. It is a curious commentary that "muscular Christianity" should have for its chief champion a man who trembles like

But the final blow that has severed him from nearly all of his old comrades was given when, at his inauguration as Professor of History at Cambridge, he made a formal retraction of the reformatory sentiments of his books; declaring that he regretted them, and that hereafter he meant to follow the views of older and wiser thinkers than himself. Many of those present, who had been most instrumental in securing him the professorship, hung their heads in shame; and one of his most intimate acquaintances told me that it was the saddest scene he ever witnessed. It is understood that he is now ambitious for promotion in the Church, and willing to sacrifice any thing for it. He is impressed with a belief that his only obstacle in that direction is the heresies promulgated in his works; but the advancement of Dean Stanley—who is a pure rationalist-shows that such is not the case. Heresy is rather popular just now with the ruling powers of the Establishment. The fact is, that Mr. Kingsley has not the elements of popularity, nor the suavity of manner which attain such positions; and the only pity is that he should not be content to stand by his own nature and heart and reach the honors, and ulti

LONDON BRIDGE.

LAND'S END.

It would be difficult to imagine any thing more excitingly beautiful than the cliffs and The water and the elerocks about Torbay. ments have carved them in such strange, almost artistic designs, that one can readily imagine how the early dwellers hereabout should have thought it some watering-place for the gods of

mately the homage, which the gifted and true in England are sure to win from their peers. What a strange chapter in the next "Curiosities of Literature" his career as a writer will make! He began with the palpitations of living England; with stories of Chartism, and the "Yeast" leavening Church and State; then he went backward, to old English mariners, to Hy-Walhalla, after whose chief it was named Thor'spatia and ancient Alexandria, and now he has got so far away from the great heart of to-day that he is engaged translating the very foolish life of St. Anthony, as recorded by Athanasius! "Blot out his name then! Record one lost soul more; One task more declined, one more foot-path untrod."

bay. Now there is a neatly-formed bridge, and
again there is a brow called "Land's End,"
which looks as if Mr. Bull's head, with two
At another
horns, had set itself to confront the country
across the channel for evermore.
moment the wanderer may find himself gazing

DADDY'S HOLE