called, after successive landlords, Poerhayes or Power's Hayes, and Dukes-hayes. The hollow in which it lies, among low hills, is on the verge of a tract of moorland; and Hayes Wood rises close at hand. Through the oak wood to Budleigh Salterton Bay is two miles and a half. [Sidenote: _At Oxford._] In this quiet spot Ralegh spent his boyhood, in circumstances not very unlike those of more eminent county families with which his was connected. During the earlier half of the sixteenth century the majority of the gentry were continually growing poorer, and a minority were growing richer. The Raleghs, it is plain, had not met with the good fortune of the Russells, and others of their rural peers. They were declining, if hardly in the degree represented subsequently. But an ampler share of prosperity could not have made much difference in young Walter's prospects or training. Three brothers were all before him in the succession to the patrimony. His birthright could not have comprised more than the cadet's prescriptive portion of necessity and brains. It is unfair to the natural curiosity of posterity that his extraordinary endowments in the second respect are not traceable in anecdotes of his childhood. Naturally a local legend reports him to have loved the society of adventurous mariners. Sir John Millais in his 'Boyhood of Ralegh,' which was painted at Budleigh Salterton, has embodied it. In a narrative printed a century after his death a general assertion of his fondness for books of voyages occurs. Otherwise his boyish tastes and habits are wholly unknown. The name of his school has not been preserved. The first accepted fact after his birth is his entrance, as a commoner, into Oriel College, of which, says Anthony à Wood, his cousin, C. Champernoun, was a member. According to a statement by Thomas Fuller, of which there is no corroboration either in the books of Christ Church, or elsewhere, he belonged also to Christ Church, before or after his admission into Oriel. For any details of his academical course, as for the dates of its commencement and close, posterity is indebted to Wood, who remarks that he went up to Oriel 'in 1568, or thereabouts,' and, 'after he had spent about three years in that house, left the University without a degree.' Wood declares that 'his natural parts being strangely advanced by academical learning, under the care of an excellent tutor, he became the ornament of the juniors, and was worthily esteemed a proficient in oratory and philosophy.' It is exceedingly likely, Ralegh being Ralegh. At the same time, particulars would have been welcome. [Sidenote: _Chronological difficulties._]