It was an immense conception: a glorious one: it stood out so clear: there was no mistake about its being the absolutely right, wise, patriotic thing; and so feasible, too, if Raleigh could but find ‘_six cents hommes qui savaient mourir_.’ But that was just what he could not find. He could draw round him, and did, by the spiritual magnetism of his genius, many a noble soul; but he could not organise them, as he seems to have tried to do, into a coherent body. The English spirit of independent action, never stronger than in that age, and most wisely encouraged, for other reasons, by good Queen Bess, was too strong for him. His pupils will ‘fight on their own hook’ like so many Yankee rangers: quarrel with each other: grumble at him. For the truth is, he demands of them too high a standard of thought and purpose. He is often a whole heaven above them in the hugeness of his imagination, the nobleness of his motive; and Don Quixote can often find no better squire than Sancho Panza. Even glorious Sir Richard Grenvile makes a mistake: burns an Indian village because they steal a silver cup; throws back the colonisation of Virginia ten years with his over-strict notions of discipline and retributive justice; and Raleigh requites him for his offence by embalming him, his valour and his death, not in immortal verse, but in immortal prose. The ‘True Relation of the Fight at the Azores’ gives the keynote of Raleigh’s heart. If readers will not take that as the text on which his whole life is a commentary they may know a great deal about him, but him they will never know. The game becomes fiercer and fiercer. Blow and counterblow between the Spanish king, for the whole West-Indian commerce was a government job, and the merchant nobles of England. At last the Great Armada comes, and the Great Armada goes again. _Venit_, _vidit_, _fugit_, as the medals said of it. And to Walter Raleigh’s counsel, by the testimony of all contemporaries, the mighty victory is to be principally attributed. Where all men did heroically, it were invidious to bestow on him alone a crown, _ob patriam servatam_. But henceforth, Elizabeth knows well that she has not been mistaken in her choice; and Raleigh is better loved than ever, heaped with fresh wealth and honours. And who deserves them better? The immense value of his services in the defence of England should excuse him from the complaint which one has been often inclined to bring against him,—Why, instead of sending others Westward Ho, did be not go himself? Surely he could have reconciled the jarring instruments with which he was working. He could have organised such a body of men as perhaps never went out before or since on the same errand. He could have done all that Cortez did, and more; and done it more justly and mercifully.