should afterwards join with the Irish; and also for terrour to the Irish who are much imboldened by those forraigne succours, and also put in hope of more ere long: there was no other way, but to make that short end of them as was made." Thus writes Edmund Spenser, the author of the "Faërie Queen," a man not famous for his ferity. Praise and blame are easy to dispense: but they are dangerous commodities. They raise too freely the thick white dust of prejudice which even dims eyes which are anxious to observe a neighbour, and effectually blinds eyes that wish to peer into the recesses of a bygone age. Let us be glad if we are more human and more humane, and avoid hugging ourselves too closely on imagined superiority. Violent death stalked down every alley of life; and violent death is not more dreadful than the haggard existence in which millions are nursed to-day. Our cruelty is a little less apparent, and more respectable. That is at any rate something. Let us be thankful for that, and let us by all means subscribe to the Home for Lost Cats. But Ralegh was not content with the perils and excitement of active service. He possessed initiative. He saw the masses of money that were being spent, and saw that full value was not being obtained. The war in his opinion was being mismanaged. He did not hesitate to write to the authorities at home, stating in round terms what his opinion was. It is not surprising that Lord Grey de Wilton was annoyed by the young man's audacity. "I neither like his carriage," he writes to Walsingham, "nor his company: and therefore other than by direction and commandment, and what his right can require he is not to expect at my hands." Apart from the administration of the war there was little in common between the two men. Lord Grey was a staunch Protestant, unwavering in his religious zeal, and blind in his hatred of Popery. He would have passed through Ireland, had he had his will, with the sword gripped in one hand and the Bible and the English Prayer-book clasped tightly in the other. Ralegh was not that order of man. There was nothing grim and nothing austere about him. He was a man of address. Lord Grey was stiff and blunt, a Puritan a little before his proper time. Very characteristic is the sentence in his letter to the Queen, telling of the death of young Cheke. "So wrought in him God's spirit, plainly declaring him a child of his; elected to be no less comfort of his good and godly friends than great instruction and manifest motion of every other hearer that stood by, of whom there was a good troop." He was inclined to regard most things from the standpoint of religious experience. He was not addicted to humanity.