that he had made tryall of it in ministring medicine to his patients, and had found it as soveraigne against poyson as any Unicornes horne." With only a little less eagerness and a wiser discrimination between fact and fable would the elders of the great Devonshire families, with many of whom the Raleghs were connected, hear the news and plan schemes for outwitting their rivals on the sea--the Spaniards--and perhaps foresee the great part their sons would play in gaining for their country prestige in this unclosing of the outside world. They would spare no pains to make the youngsters worthy to carry on the great tradition of Devonshire gentlemen under the splendid new conditions, which were daily becoming more apparent. A fine stock were the Devonshire gentlemen who watched over the years of Walter Ralegh's boyhood, whetting no doubt by their interest his keenness in Latin and Greek, in fencing and riding, and training his knowledge of men. Among the Gilberts and Champernounes and Raleghs and Carews, there would be men as skilful in the handling of a ship as in the proper management of a farm, and to all would young Ralegh listen with his mind feverishly alert for information, and from all he would learn what each could teach him. Old John Hooker, who lived at Exeter, and helped to write the continuation of Holinshed's chronicle, knew the boy and took an interest in him; as is easy to see from his proud reference to the Raleghs' illustrious descent--royal even he would have it in despite of Sir William Pole--and from his fine warning to young Ralegh when he was emerging into distinction to remain worthy of it. "These all," he writes, "were men of great honour and nobility whose virtues are highly recorded sparsim in the Chronicles of England. But yet, as nothing is permanent in this life and all things variable under the sun, and Time hath devoured and consumed greatest men and mightiest monarchs and most noble communities in the world--according to the old country saying, 'Be the day never so long, yet at length it will ring to even-song'--so this honourable race ... continued in great honour, nobility and reputation, yet in process of time seemed at length to be buried in oblivion. "Now it hath pleased God to raise the same even from the dead.... And whereof cometh this that the Lord hath so blessed you, but only that you should be beneficial and profitable to all men?" And he ends his discourse, in which a note of almost fatherly concern is heard, with an apt euphuism about the bee, to clinch his argument and perhaps to show his knowledge of courtly style (did not he too go to London as member for Exeter?) "As the bee is no longer suffered to have a place in the hive than whiles he worketh, no more is that man to have place in the public weal than whiles he doth some good therein."