“Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s blood.”
Let it not, therefore, be imagined, from the foregoing instances, that
every Greco-Roman Nose indicates an energetic statesman, or a literary
monarch; or that the same actions are to be predicated from the same
form of Nose in different men under different circumstances.
Energy and refinement may exist in every department of life. The peasant
may furnish as illustrious an example of either as the Prince. But what
a King has, these heroes want; and so they die unhonoured for lack of a
record. The illustrations are, therefore, necessarily drawn from the
high and mighty of various spheres.
Stars of lesser magnitude, however, present themselves to shed a further
light upon the subject.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH and SIR PHILIP SIDNEY were two men whose characters
exhibited many points of identity.
In any arduous enterprize which promised fame and honour, Sir Walter
Raleigh was always prominent. Eager to support the Reformation, he
served in the Protestant army as a volunteer during the civil wars in
France, and afterwards tendered his services to the Netherlands in their
contest with Spain for civil and religious liberty. One of the most
attractive enterprizes of the reign of Elizabeth to men of energy and
forethought was, however, that presented by the recently-opened field of
American discovery. Into this Raleigh threw himself heart and soul. With
his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, he made the then perilous voyage
to the New World, but failed to establish a firm footing on its shores.
Still he was not to be thus foiled. After a careful consideration of the
best authorities, he came to the just conclusion that there was land
north of the Gulf of Florida, a tract then wholly unexplored. Having
obtained from the Queen the inexpensive grant of all he might discover,
be it sea or be it land, be it inhabited or be it void, he fitted out
vessels of discovery; and, though not permitted by the wary Queen to
accompany them himself, they verified his predictions by discovering the
country now called Virginia—a name which the virgin Queen herself
bestowed upon it.
But it was not by his energy that Raleigh alone distinguished himself.
The young Protestant volunteer, and the American adventurer would long
since have been forgotten among a host of compeers, had not he presented
far higher claims to the notice of posterity. “Raleigh was one of those
rare men who seem qualified to excel in all pursuits alike; and his
talents were set off by an extraordinary _laboriousness_, and _capacity_
of application. (I⁄II). As a navigator, soldier, statesman, and
historian, his name is intimately and honourably linked with one of the
most brilliant periods of British history.”[18]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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