intention of your Highness that we should be the first breakers of the peace, seeing your Highness having notice of the coming forth of the Spanish fleet did not give us any new direction at all touching the same in your last order of the 30th July. Upon these grounds we receded from our first resolution, and took into consideration the state of our fleet, which we found in all things to be extremely defective, but more I particularly in want of liquor; some of the ships having not beverage for above four days, and the whole not able to make above eight, and that at short allowance; and no small part both of our beverage beer] and water stinking. . . . [Here follow further accounts of their difficulties, and that they had put into Lisbon.] . . . Our only comfort is that we have a God to lean upon, although we walk in darkness and see no light. I shall not trouble your Highness with any complaints of myself, of the indisposition of my body, or troubles of my mind; my many infirmities will one day, I doubt not, sufficiently plead for me or against me, so that I may be free of so great a burden, consoling myself in the mean time in the Lord, and in the firm purpose of my heart with all faithfulness and sincerity to discharge the trust while reposed in me.'

These are touching words. His great heart had survived his good constitution, which now was breaking down before the heavy labours and peculiar diseases of sea life. Three weeks

after writing this letter, and finding that there was no present expectation of the Spanish silver fleet for which he was on the look ont, he ran home to repair and replenish his exhausted squadron. He found Cromwell with as much on his, hands as he could manage, and quite unable-with Deane, Penn, Ascue, Lawson, dead or not suited to his government-to dispense with his naval genius, name, and experience. The Catholic powers were in ominous combination against England, and the successes recently achieved in the Mediterranean required constant watching. Blake did not shrink from Sick and broken as he was, he task. any watched the necessary preparations in dockyard and arsenal, and at the end of February, 1656, went on board the Naseby, with young Montagu (one of the Montagu family whose names so often occur at that period on the same side of politics) for his colleague. The squadron dropped westward down the Channel, keeping the coast as far as Torbay,-then turned away to the southward, and Blake saw the last of the white cliffs and green slopes of old England.

His first duty was to effect a permanent treaty with Portugal, the tactics of which towards the English Government were very slippery, and the capital of which had recently been the scene of a disgraceful attempt by assassins on the life of Mr. Meadows, our English envoy there. He left a few frigates to keep a look out on Cadiz, and at once came to an anchor with his squadron, at the mouth of the Tagus. After some tedious delays and evaVol. 104.-No. 207.

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sions-the letters about which still irritate in the perusal in the pages of Thurloe-the king agreed to the treaty, and paid the money, due as compensation and on other grounds, to the offended government. Blake then proceeded to his post off Cadiz, to do what damage he could to the Spaniards, and to look out for their costly argosies from America. Bad weather followed, and the squadron suffered terribly from gales. The Spanish vessels in the harbour would not venture out. The topsails of the argosies they longed for rose not above the sea. The Admiral made a diversion to chastise Malaga, achieved it most successfully, and returned. Provisions and water ran short, and he moved northwards to get them in Portugal, leaving Captain Stayner with seven ships to occupy the old post. This was in September. While the two commanders were away, a division of the glittering silver fleet met the ardent eyes of Stayner's squadron. The rapture of that moment must have been worth an age! There they were, four splendid Spanish galleons, two India-built merchantmen, their holds full of the choicest products of the far west-gold and silver, pearls and precious stones, hides, indigo, sugar, cochineal, varinas, tobacco. The viceroy of Lucia and

his family, with other potentates of the proudest breed of potentates in the world, were on board, fatally unconscious of the coming danger. It was evening of the 8th September when they first saw Stayner's frigates, and concluded them to be their own. Day dawned, and with it a consciousness of their deadly error. They scattered themselves in confusion, like pigeons when a hawk is on the wing; some of them running ashore as their only chance of saving their treasures. Stayner was upon them immediately, and there were six hours of sharp fighting. Their viceadmiral was beaten, and his vessel plundered and burnt, the viceroy and his family going down in it. Only two ships escaped, and great was the treasure of sparkling silver pieces which fell into the sailors' horny hands. Montagu came home with the prizes. The bullion was sent up to London under the charge of soldiers, and eight-and-thirty waggon loads of silver reeled through the streets amidst the applauses of the multitude, to its place at the Tower.

Meanwhile our Admiral remained at his perilous post, and carried on a winter blockade. A dreary winter passed away, and never had Cadiz been free from enemies, except in weather in which the most daring spirits of the town would not have dreamed of venturing out. The spring of 1657 came. He had had a run to Tetuan inside the Straits, and given a hint to the Barbary rovers to be upon their good behaviour. He now received information that another silver fleet had crossed the

Atlantic,

Atlantic, and taken shelter in one of the Canary Islands, and he started for those regions immediately. It was the 13th April t when he sailed-the Ides-and we have no doubt that the veteran, who always kept up his classics, and talked about them whenever he could get a chance, remembered Mæcenas's birthday, and ran over the Est mihi nonum in which Horace celebrates it. But this reminds us, as he sails southward, that we ought to peep over the shoulder of his old biographer of the last century, and form, out of the personal details which he gives us, some portrait of him in his ship.

He was always, at bottom, an earnest, grave, pious man-a Puritan gentleman of the highest breed. No oath was ever heard in his vessel, as we know from one who lived to tell the fact to the writer just mentioned. All the ordinances of religion were kept in his fleet as in the most decorous town; days of humiliation, too, on due occasions, when he himself 'prayed in publick with his people.' Yet he was not without a singular relish for humour, and even sarcasm; he kept up a good knowledge of polite literature (which no fanatic ever does), and had even the pleasant human weakness of liking it to be known that he had not forgotten his scholarship while defending Taunton or chasing Van Tromp. He had those local, homely feelings, often found in great men, and generally in kindly ones; for instance, he would get his bread, cheese, and beer from Somersetshire, and had a Bridgewater man about him with whom he liked to chat of the people and places of his native town. All these traits are very English, and remind one a good deal of Lord Collingwood. In person he was five feet and a half high, of a sanguine complexion, and had a certain species of dignity yet simplicity about him.

'The last thing he did after he had given his commands to his men,' says the Biographer of 1740, was to pray with the above-mentioned Mr. Bear' [afterwards Mayor of Bridgewater, and the writer's informant] 'after which he would say, "Thomas, bring me the pretty cup of sack. He would then sit down, and give Thomas liberty to do so, and inquire what news he had of the Bridgewater men, &c.; then eating a little bread, with two or three glasses of canary wine, he went to bed.'

We are now near the end of this great and good man's career, and his last bit of service was worthy of his whole life. It was one of the most daring things any hero ever did, and wonderful when viewed as the work of a man far gone in deadly disease, and at the head of an over-worked and ill-furnished squadron. When the Spanish admiral at Santa Cruz heard of Blake's design, he prepared for a desperate defence. The harbour,

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shaped like a horseshoe, was defended by a regular castle. Forts lined the inner part of the bay; and the forts were connected with the castle by a line of earthworks. To these preparations were added the vessels of the silver fleet itself-the treasure having been previously carried ashore from it to the town-and the galleons disposed with their broadsides outwards at the narrow entrance. Other vessels formed still another line inside these, and not a spot but what was made available for musket or cannon. It was literally like going into the lion's jaw.

Monday, the 20th April, 1657, came; and as the day dawned on the Peak of Teneriffe and the Happy Isles the canvas of Blake's squadron loomed high out of the sea. The Spaniards were ready, and waiting. The sick Admiral rose from his bed, came out into the fresh breeze which filled the sails and hurried them on towards the enemy, and called a council of war. laid his plans for an attack before them, and every body knew he must do his best, and that the risk was tremendous. Prayers were offered up before breakfast, and then the terrible day's work began.

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The partition of labour was very simple. Blake took to himself and his division, the attack on the castle and batteries. To Stayner was entrusted the attack on the galleons, the Admiral no doubt remembering his recent practice in that way. They had twenty-five ships and frigates between them. Forward went the gallant Stayner with his vice-admiral's pendant streaming from the Speaker in the van of all. Castle, batteries, galleons, he had to run the gauntlet of their freshest fire, and he did so, right into a semicircle of shot, but near to the special craft that he meant to take. Blake followed immediately, took the shore work to himself, and left Stayner the galleons. It soon became a simple question of cannonading, and the English cannonading was the best. The fire from the forts slackened by degrees, and batteries were shut up one by one. At noon, Blake could spare a little time to help Stayner. At two the English had conquered. Two Spanish ships had gone down, and every vessel in harbour was on fire. A shift of wind came with such wonderful felicity to carry them out again, that it was esteemed distinctly providential. They left the place a wreck, and yet themselves got away with fifty men only killed, and a hundred and fifty wounded. Nothing even in Blake's career ever so much delighted the English nation, or called forth so much wonder and admiring applause. What especially excited surprise and speculation was that the Admiral should have destroyed the Spanish fleet while under the protection of stone walls, and this fact not only drew a very celebrated remark from Clarendon, but is even now pressed

into service as bearing on existing controversies. 'He was the first man who ever brought the fleet to contemn castles on shore,' says Clarendon. Mr. Dixon thinks it necessary, in the preface to his cheap edition, to make the exploit the ground of hinting at the inferior practice of some modern admirals. This is no doubt a popular topic; but for our own parts,-remembering the great diversities of opinion which exist between the best practical men on this question of wooden walls v. stone ones; remembering how heavy the loss at Algiers was, though the fortifications, there, were wretched compared with those now existing in the great military countries of Europe; bearing in mind the dictum of the Duke of Wellington, and the remarks of Sir Howard Douglasfor our own parts, we say, we should decline the responsibility of giving a decided opinion on the subject. There is not a more important question than the degree to which the changes of the last half century have affected England's naval supremacy. But it is a question which only time can decide, and which cannot be discussed in the meanwhile without a degree of technical and special knowledge, very rarely found out of the circle of professional men. Enough, if the general body of popular writers supply authentic accounts of the exploits of earlier heroes, whose glorious way of meeting the difficulties of their own time affords the best encouragement to their successors to encounter the difficulties of another.

The remainder of Admiral Blake's great story is soon told. After his triumph at Santa Cruz he returned at once to the coast of Spain. His spirit was as high as ever, though death was in his face; and he ran over to Salee on the Morocco coast to conclude negotiations with the dusky pirates and set the captives of Christendom free. He was completely successful in his object, and he now made for home. The honours he had won by his late expedition, the thanks of Parliament, the jewel sent him, the letter of Cromwell, came to him while still afloat. He crossed the Bay of Biscay, getting worse and worse every hour. By the time England was in sight he was on his death-bed in his cabin, and it was just as his ship sailed into Plymouth Sound, and there rose before the eyes of his shipmates the well-known scenes of the finest of English sea-ports, that his high and pure spirit passed away. It was the autumn of 1657, when he was just entering on his sixtieth year.

His obsequies were worthy of his nation and his fame. His body, embalmed, and cased in lead, was carried by sea to Greenwich, and lay in state on the spot where the present noble hospital shelters the veterans who fought in the last naval war under men like himself. His long funeral procession, barges

and