The Elizabethan epic did not end a day too soon. There was no more life left in it; and God had something better in store for England. Raleigh’s ideal was a noble one: but God’s was nobler far. Raleigh would have made her a gold kingdom, like Spain, and destroyed her very vitals by that gold, as Spain was destroyed. And all the while the great and good God was looking steadfastly upon that little struggling Virginian village, Raleigh’s first-born, forgotten in his new mighty dreams, and saying, ‘Here will I dwell, for I have a delight therein.’ There, and not in Guiana; upon the simple tillers of the soil, not among wild reckless gold-hunters, would His blessing rest. The very coming darkness would bring brighter light. The evil age itself would be the parent of new good, and drive across the seas steadfast Pilgrim Fathers and generous Royalist Cavaliers, to be the parents of a mightier nation than has ever yet possessed the earth. Verily, God’s ways are wonderful, and His counsels in the great deep. So ends the Elizabethan epic. Must we follow the corpse to the grave? It is necessary. And now, ‘you gentlemen of England, who sit at home at ease,’ what would you have done in like case?—Your last die thrown; your last stake lost; your honour, as you fancy, stained for ever; your eldest son dead in battle—What would you have done? What Walter Raleigh did was this. He kept his promise. He had promised Lord Arundel to return to England; and return he did. But it is said his real intention, as he himself confessed, was to turn pirate and take the Mexico fleet.