CHAPTER II.

"Our religious nature is the granitic base and material of character, and out of it only can the highest order of manliness or womanliness be produced." Our New Departure.

THE rattling cordage creaked and strained, the white sails, like the wings of some mighty sea-bird, flapped and swayed as, now on this tack, now on that, great galleon or lighter caravel circled in fast-lessening compass around the solitary English bark that rode defiantly at bay-one against fiftyfour. Above hung the blue arch of the summer sky, below swelled and billowed the darker blue of the great Atlantic, while all around stretched an unbroken waste of waters save where, far to eastward, the dim outlines of the Isle of Flores and the tall peaks of Pico jagged the misty horizon. In those troublous days of three centuries back, when the hot sea-feuds of England and Spain raged fierce and bloody, the English fleet, as it lay at anchor off the Azores, had been surprised by a Spanish armada of fiftyfour sail. Eleven of the twelve English ships had cut anchor and escaped in safety, but the flagship of the admiral, the stout little bark Revenge, stood the brunt, and now alone of all the fleet rode crippled but unconquered, the focus of that circle of fire and of death. Alive to the danger that encompassed him, defeat inevitable but disgrace never, the grand old admiral,

"Our second Richard Lion Heart."

that glorious Sir Richard Grenville, whose name has ever lived in English hearts and on English lips the synonym of loyalty, courage, and manliness, drew his sword and vowed neither to run nor surrender, but to uphold the honor of England to the last. Smaller and smaller grows the circle; fiercer and

with more terrible effect the splintering broadsides boom and crash; again and again the Spanish boarders grapple ship to ship and swarm over port and gunwale. But, inspired by the indomitable courage of their leader, again and again the gallant English sailors repel the Spanish attack, and their well-directed fire drives back many a towering galleon sinking or disabled. And now, after fifteen hours of bitter and ceaseless fight, with pikes broken and powder spent, the relentless water pouring in through the torn and gaping sides, half-scuttled but unconquered, still the Revenge rides defiant, still floats the red cross flag at the masthead, still stands the dauntless admiral firm and unsubdued. Thus to the very last he waged the unequal conflict with a hopelessness that was heroism and an obstinacy that was inspiration, until, shot through and through, but always refusing to surrender, he was borne on board the flagship of the enemy ere yet on his dismantled but glorious little bark the red cross of England gave place to the golden flag of Spain. "Here die I, Richard Grenville, came calmly and unfalteringly the last words of this grand old Christian sailor and loyal man, “with a joyful and a quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a good soldier ought to do who has fought for his country and his queen, his honor and religion."

Sterling lives spring from rugged soil; brains, not blood, are the outcome of the sweat-drops, and an ancestry of toilers, in the course of centuries, blossoms into a posterity of thinkers. So, also, an age of adventurers gives final place to an era of home-lovers, a nation of patriots.

When, in 1603, stout old Martin Pring, cruising with delight among the fair islands that fringe the Maine coast, ran his little Discoverer into the mouth of the Piscataqua, or when, later still, John Smith, the wise, intrepid, and keensighted, beating around the Isle of Shoals, looked with an explorer's gratification upon the green shore-line beyond, little came into their thoughts besides the attractiveness of

the land or the alluring prospects of future trading profits. Yet from the reports of these forerunners came the future commonwealths, and the chance puff of wind that turned their sails landward wafted to New England shores the seeds of enterprise that have blossomed into the warm heart-throbs of millions of freemen.

Greene says, in his "History of the English People": "The puritanism of the sea-dogs went hand in hand with their love of adventure"; and as they, to use the words of Canning, "turned to the New World to redress the balance of the Old," we see, year after year, the pioneer following the adventurer, the settler the explorer, each bearing in his heart, indissolubly linked, the love of country and of religion, and planting their feet, with each new wave of emigration, more and more firmly on the new-found shores.

So the men of Hampshire and of Devon--following in the wake of that grand Sir Richard who died so gloriously in his sea-fight off the Azores, and of that gentle but courageous Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who went down in a September gale as it swept the raging Atlantic, calling out to his crew through the din of the tempest and the gloom of the night, "Be of good cheer, my lads, for we are as near to heaven by sea as by land"—peopled the wave-washed shores of America from the James to the Penobscot, and gave to the new-made homes the names that brought ever to their minds the old ties and the dear hearthstones across the sea; and Plymouth and Biddeford and Dartmouth and Portsmouth arose in a new soil-sturdy grafts and clippings from the parent tree. And from that day to this the home feeling so strong in the breasts of those early colonists finds expression in the hearts of their descendants, and the sons of Portsmouth, in whatever part of the habitable globe they may meet, clasp warm and ready hands, and in the thronging memories of that quaint old city by the Piscataqua prove once again that however time or space may intervene, each one of them is, while life shall last, a true and loyal "Portsmouth boy."

To this rambling old town of Portsmouth, so rich with the flavor of two historic centuries, full of queer old cottages, mansions, and homesteads, whose very gables and hitching-posts have in these later years been touched and glorified by Aldrich's ready pen-to this quondam fishingsettlement, now grown into a substantial county-town, with its aristocracy of ancestry and its wealth of old renown, Oliver Brooks removed his little family in 1817, before his baby-boy had completed his first year of life. Practically, therefore, a son of Portsmouth, to which dear old town," he writes in after years, “I am proud to reckon myself as belonging," in which all his years from infancy to young manhood were passed—this loyal son had throughout his life a warm spot in his heart for his boyhood's home, every rod of which was familiar ground, from Kittery 'Foreside to Christian Shore, and from the old clock on the North Church to the worn and battered school-house at Portsmouth Plains.

And as all through his life the old town was dear to him, still dearer and more precious were his memories of the simple and quiet home in which he was reared. "There are few questions," he said, in a sermon delivered before the Sabbath-school Conference in Boston, in 1851, "that can stir the sentimental mind with profounder emotions than those which gather around the cradle of a helpless and scarcely conscious infant, and ask, What shall its life, its experience, its influence be? And, as the fact, what is there so much needed as a genuine practical recognition of the importance thus freely confessed of the interests which throng around the cradle and cluster in the home?"

That this recognition is, to a greater or less extent, accorded by every truly conscientious parent few will deny, and the fact that it was so accorded in that humble Portsmouth home is attested by the character of the man, built up so stoutly upon the basis that was laid in the home of the boy. "Oliver Brooks"—so testifies one acquainted with the family" was distinguished for his solid common-sense

His wife was,

and his unswerving integrity and honor. and is, one of those clear-sighted, pure-minded, diligent, thoughtful, and peaceful women whose sons have glorified the ages.

In such a home naught but right principles and careful precepts could be fostered, and thus the boy grew up, surrounded by the clean and ennobling influences of honest, simple, patient Christian lives. What tribute more heartfelt could be offered than the dedicatory inscription referred to in the preceding chapter? and what tenderer recognition of the worth of those lives that so conscientiously guided his youthful steps could be made than that which found expression in a poem of commemoration sent by him to his parents on his mother's eightieth birthday?

"But God sees not the greatest things

Where mortal voices shout acclaim,
Nor does He find His queens and kings
Where only station gives the name.
God looks at souls, at brave, strong hearts,
Which throb that others they may bless-
At those who nobly act their parts

In patience and unselfishness.

A strong, healthy, helpful, and manly little fellow, breathing in life and vigor with every sea-wind that swept in from Appledore, and with every pine-laden breeze wafted down from the wooded river-shores above, he gained from