“A better than I shall rear it high, For now the way is plain; And though I were dead,” Winstanley said, “The light would rise again.” . . . . . . . With that Winstanley went his way, And left the rock renowned, And summer and winter his pilot star Hung bright o’er Plymouth Sound. The sequel to this episode is a sad one, for it is recorded that the tower was destroyed on the 26th of November, 1703, and its public-spirited and confident designer perished with it. And men looked south to the harbour mouth, The lighthouse tower was down. Other scenes rise up before us as the centuries roll on. We see the good citizens of Plymouth crowd on to the Hoe to witness the departure of Captain Cook on his various voyages of exploration in the South Seas; we note the pregnant comings and goings attending the great war with France, stately vessels sailing from the Sound in all their warlike glory, anon coming back crippled and wounded, with half their men killed or maimed. Then, later, we see the arch-cause of all this bloodshed—the great Napoleon—a prisoner on board the _Bellerophon_ in Plymouth Sound, while the waters below us teem with the boats and craft of all descriptions of the curious sightseers. The years slip by. This time we are at war with Russia, with France as our ally, and we stand on the Hoe to watch the stately troopships sailing off with the flower of our army to court death in the Black Sea or in the Baltic. History tells the tale. At another time we watch the first shipload of emigrants bound for the Antipodes to plant New Englands in Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere; and so it goes on through the centuries—the Plymouth Hoe beautified by the hands of men, and surrounded by stately buildings, and within sound of a teeming population, but in its general character and appearance little changed since the days of which we have spoken; and Plymouth men of to-day congregate on the Hoe, and watch the huge liners and leviathan battleships coming and going, even as their far-away ancestors noted the coming and going of Drake and his fighting ships that bore over the blue waters of the Sound those pioneers of empire—the sea-dogs of Devon. W. H. K. WRIGHT. [Illustration: leaf] =A SONG OF EMPIRE.= (Occasioned by the visit of the King and Queen to Devonshire, March, 1902.) A song, a song of Empire, of Britain, and her fame; Of sons who fought and fell for her, and gained a deathless name; Of men who on the trackless deep, or on the battle-field, Maintained her old supremacy, who died, but scorned to yield.