was a terror to the French, Spaniards, Portingals, and Indians. Many princes of Italy, Germany, and others, as well enemies as friends, in his lifetime desired his picture. He was the second that ever went through the Straits of Magelhaens, and the first that ever went round about the world. He was lawfully married unto two wives, both young, yet he himself and ten of his brethren died without issue: he made his youngest brother, Thomas, his heir, who was with him in the most and chiefest of his employments. In brief, he was as famous in Europe and America as Tamerlane in Asia and Africa." Honest Stow, however, admits that the great man had his faults. He enumerates among his imperfections, that he was over-ambitious of honour, inconstant in friendship, and too greatly affected to popularity. Fuller adds to Drake's high qualities, that he was a very religious man towards God and his houses, chaste in his life, just in his dealings, true to his word, merciful to those that were under him, hating nothing so much as idleness, and seeing to all things himself, never wont to rely on other men's care, how trusty or skilful soever they might seem to be, but always contemning danger, and refusing no trial." According to some less favourable accounts he was ostentatious, vain-glorious, and much given to boasting. Perhaps the highest compliments to his skill and indomitable courage are to be found in the characters drawn of him by his mortal enemies, who, indeed, "honoured his memory in the bitterness of their enmity towards him."§ At Panama two days' holidays were kept to rejoice at his death as a fue and at his damnation as a heretic. The most popular of the Spanish poets of the day composed an epic poem to revile him; and the Spaniards long excused their own humiliating

*This is a mistake. Drake was the third, and not the second navigator that went through that difficult strait. It was discovered by Fernando Magelhaens in 1520._ In 1558-9 Juan Ladrilleros went through the strait; and Drake, apparently without any knowledge of his track, followed it twenty years afterwards.

+ Chronicle.

VOL. IV.

+ Holy State.

§ Southey.

F

defeats by representing Drake as having been a magician, and in very close alliance with the devil.

But even in his native county of Devonshire Drake was long held to have been a magician, though one only practising in the Magia Alba, or white and innocent magic.

The abundant property which he left was much diminished by a prosecution instituted by the crown against his youngest brother, heir, and executor, Thomas Drake. It is said that this process rested solely upon a pretended debt;" and this will be easily credited by those who best know the ungenerous, grasping spirit which prevailed at court, and among public men, during the last clouded years of Queen Elizabeth, and during the whole reign of James I. The estate which remained, however, placed Thomas's son Francis in such a station that he was created a baronet by James I., and returned as a member for his county.

THE life of Lord Burghley, if it were to be written with all the fulness of which the subject admits, would be the history of England, and in some measure of Europe, for the latter half of the sixteenth century. Even the materials that exist in print would, if they were collected, fill many large volumes. They have enabled Dr. Nares, Lord Burghley's biographer of the greatest pretension, to extend his narrative to three ponderous quartos.

In the space to which we are limited we must confine ourselves, as far as possible, to the man himself, to the incidents and circumstances of his career that are most of a personal nature and that most mark and illustrate his character. Of matter of this description there is also no scarcity. In particular, much that is very curious and interesting has been supplied by a person of Lord Burghley's establishment, 66 one who lived in the house with him during the last twenty-five years of his life," in a