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EDDYSTONE LIGHT-HOUSE.

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 pasquiuade 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.

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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 George Dawson, one of the finest lecturers in England, has pointed out, in an unpublished essay on Sir Francis Drake, good reasons for believing that in Othello Shakspeare meant to portray a negro.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 be used in such a connection, with the object him, as a device on his coat of arms, the figure for which these Spaniards sailed, the Irish reof a Moor, which meant simply a compliment to solved themselves into a nation of robbers, and the then highly respectable business of negro dragged their helpless defenders from the waves slave-trading; from.which Mr. Dawson deduces only to stab and behead them, apparently for that in those days there was no distinction be- sport, for even that was not necessary in order tween "Moor" and "Negro" in the English to take their clothing and jewelry. 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 present-at every step that there are worlds anterior to ed 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."

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

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.

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 Two hours by train, through a pleasant rehe was not the only navigator who threw aside gion, bring one across from Plymouth to this with scorn the most important discoveries for beautiful town-as beautiful in its way as Nathe sake of that which did not exist. It was ples, and sitting on its crescent beach much in said that the sailors who voyaged with Columbus the same way. Having arrived early in the placed a magnet near his compass so as to di- morning-too early to call on the eminent vert him from sailing further westward than man to whom the scientific exploration of the Cuba; but there is now more reason to believe cavern has been intrusted, I wandered for that his course was warped by the dominant some hours about the embowered lanes for theory. The natives whom he encountered at which Devonshire suburbs are famous. On Cuba told him that due west there was a people one occasion, having walked some distance, who knew many arts; and had he sailed as forward as I thought, and finding myself close they pointed we would not now be painfully on my starting-point, I remembered an ingenspelling out, from letters traced in dust, the ious illustration made by the late Archbishop history of those wonderful civilizations of Peru Whately from an incident in these lanes. and Mexico which Columbus would have found gentleman, he said, riding through the deep and at their height. He must also pursue the rain- shady Devonshire lanes did not reach the place bow with the mythic bag of gold at its end- for which he started so soon as he expected, but pursue it to bitter disappointment. What na- saw no one of whom he could inquire the right vies were crushed and stranded by that theory! | way; nevertheless the increasing number of

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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.

Another ingenious story of this neighborhood I heard used in a half scientific, half religious discussion which occurred in a company during a meeting of the British Association. Some persons having expressed apprehension as to the general skepticism that might follow an unchecked pursuit of certain scientific inquiries, Mr. Froude, the Engineer (brother of the historian), gave the narrative of a man who had lost his way at night among the moors near Torquay. These moors sometimes lead to precipices, and are not free from pits; this the lost traveler knew, and at every step he was in deadly fear of falling into one of these pits. At last his foot slipped downward! He threw up his hands and fortunately grasped the branch of a tree, which extended over the abyss. It was pitch-dark and he could not see the bank from which he had fallen; he swung his feet that way, but no-he could not reach it. Hanging by his straining arms over the pit he shouted for help, but no help came. After struggling

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 surprised if Mr. Froude's anecdote reminds me that it was in this neighborhood that the very remarkable family of which he is a member was reared. The father of the Froudes-the Venerable R. H. Froude-was Archdeacon of Totnes, and resided, I believe, at Dartmoor. There, at any rate, the historian Anthony Froude was born in 1818. Like nearly all the more thoughtful scholars who were at Oxford twenty-five years ago, he and his brother (now deceased) came under the powerful sway of John Henry Newman, and were High Church enthusiasts. It was at this time that he wrote "The Lives of the English Saints." In 1847 and 1848 there came out those strange books, "The Shadows of the Clouds" and "The Nemesis of Faith," which showed that his mind and heart were but girding themselves for another kind of journey from that on which he had started when he took orders as a deacon with Dr. Newman. When the latter passed into the Church of Rome Anthony's brother went with him, but for the fu

ture.

SOUTH-COAST SAUNTERINGS IN ENGLAND.

ture historian it was the crumbling of the last | a leaf before moral opposition. At the outset temple in which he had sought refuge, and it left of his career Kingsley indulged in some heresy above him only the vault of heaven, within him while preaching on a certain occasion in LonThere was nothing in him don, when some layman arose in the church Kingsley was the dome of reason. that could make a zealot of any kind; so he and invited all who believed the doctrine of the gave up his orders and his Oxford fellowship Church to leave the house. and betook himself to the quiet paths of litera- much excited, and denounced as a "liar" any The Oxonian authorities have never one who should charge him with heresy; but ceased to malign and persecute him for the he never recovered from this blow, and has books he wrote while a student there; he hardly ventured to speak his mind since. Of never replies, but pursues patiently his own late years he has completely identified England work. He is nearly connected by marriage with Justice and (apparently) the Establishment with Charles Kingsley, and his home at Bromp- with Truth, and has merged "muscular ChrisHe is far from being a pleasant speaker, his ton, in London, is very dear to the circle of fine tianity" into Carlyle's worship of Force. spirits-Carlyle, Arnold, Palgrave, Spedding, Last year he and others who are often found around its manner being affected and his voice afflicted hospitable fireside. The brother who became with a sad stammer; but what he says is alThe other brother, civil en- ways profoundly interesting. a Catholic died. gineer, has a beautiful home here at Torquay: preached to the Volunteers, at their camp near He was so much excited he is the youngest of the brothers, but is al- Wimbledon, a discourse about Judah's lionready widely esteemed as a man of science. the lion being the British lion, and the doctrine They are all remarkably handsome; Anthony, an apotheosis of war. ming his utterance, that some feared he would especially, is by all odds the handsomest liter- at one time, his stammer at the same time damary man in London. fall into apoplexy. The discourse was powerful; but an old reader of his could not forget how he said in "Alton Locke"-I don't know how it stands in the expurgated edition-that one of the most inscrutable things on this earth to him is a soldier. There would seem to be in his mind, and his brother Henry's also, enough or more than enough of sinew, but a lack of bone: what they do and write is not organic, and it must pass away. Many of his Thomas Hughes warmest friends have tried to hold on to their faith that he would recur to his earlier manliness and his "first love." despaired of him when he found him taking sides with the Confederates during the American War.

It is very notable, by-the-way, how in England -and, measurably, in America-genius runs in families as witness the Napiers, Mackintoshes, Froudes, Newmans, Arnolds, Martineaus, Darwins, Kingsleys. The Kingsleys come from the north of Devonshire. An old family of Cheshire it was, which in the civil wars had suffered more for its adherence to the cause of the Parliament than its most distinguished descendant has suffered from his early Chartist propensities. It was probably, however, rather from his mother than from "the Kingsleys of Kingsley, in the forest of Delamere," that Charles inherited his noble discontent with the actual, and his impulsive free thought. Mr. Carlyle told me that he remembered visiting the rectory of his father, who was a clergyman, when Charles was but a He observed then that the dreamy small lad. 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 A popular subjected him to many taunts. 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 acquaintever witnessed. It is understood that he is now ances told me that it was the saddest scene he 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

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It would be difficult to imagine any thing more excitingly beautiful than the cliffs and rocks about Torbay. The water and the elements have carved them in such strange, almost

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 liv-artistic designs, that one can readily imagine ing England; with stories of Chartism, and the "Yeast" leavening Church and State; then he went backward, to old English mariners, to Hypatia 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."

how the early dwellers hereabout should have thought it some watering-place for the gods of Walhalla, after whose chief it was named Thor's. 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 horns, had set itself to confront the country across the channel for evermore. At another moment the wanderer may find himself gazing

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