6

6

Now, the narratives even of Drake's enemies, who dwell on the supposed disagreement between him and Norris, the Commander of the troops, make the cause of the difference to be, that Norris proposed landing at Corunna, and Drake opposed it. At Corunna, however, they wasted many days in hard fighting, with very little object, except to learn, for the first time apparently, that the Spaniards could defend themselves on occasion. They next landed at Peniche, marched with little resistance to Lisbon, and occupied the suburbs. The old walls of the city were its only defence; but they had no artillery-not even a field-piece by which they could throw down one of the gates—and it was not then known,' says Mr Barrow, that a bag of gunpowder, attached to the gates, would effect that object.' This seems strange the Petard' at least was in constant use for that purpose in the French and Dutch wars of Elizabeth's reign. And what was probably a worse disappointment to the soldiers, and certainly to the adventurers, the presence of the unlucky pretender to the throne of Portugal, Don Antonio, prior of Crato, with the expedition, rendered it impossible, with common decency, to sack the suburbs. Had we marched through the country,' says the author of the contemporary account, 6 as enemies, our soldiers had been well supplied with all their wants. Had we made enemies of the suburbs of Lisbon, we had been the richest armie that ever went out of England!? As it was, seeing that there was neither fighting nor pillage to be had, Norris and Essex retreated on Drake's squadron at Cascaes. Sir Francis is said to have promised to go up the Tagus to fetch them, but to have failed of his word, finding his plan impracticable. It is not unlikely that his eager and confident disposition may have led him to undertake more than he could effect; but to blame him, as his many enviers at home sagaciously did, at once for promising impossibilities, and then for not performing them, seems rather malicious. But, according to the True Discourse,' his undertaking was only if the weather did not hinder him.' * At Cascaes he performed the only valuable service of the expedition; seizing a squadron of corn ships, intended for the equipment of a new armada. After a few insignificant adventures off the Azores, the armament returned to Plymouth. Six thousand men had fallen, the remainder were discharged, receiving five shillings a-piece; which, says Hakluyt,

Essex, in a petulant letter written after the second expedition to Cadiz, attributes the failure of this attempt on Lisbon to Drake's not daring to carry his vessels past Fort St Julian's. Even Essex would scarcely have ventured on such an imputation in the veteran's lifetime.

was believed to be more than by any means could be due to ⚫ them.' Yet the public seem fully to have believed that Drake returned (as Camden expressly asserts he did) with a large booty.

In 1595, Drake set sail on the last cruise of his adventurous life. His associate in this enterprise was the veteran Sir John Hawkins, then nearly eighty years of age. Mr Barrow attributes the old seaman's joining in this adventure to anxiety for the fate of his son, then a prisoner in South America. Perhaps a more immediate motive was the inexhaustible spirit of the unsuccessful gambler-the fire which burns fiercest under the ashes of old age. The ill-omened fleet reached the West Indies in September 1595. One of its vessels was taken off Porto Rico by the Spaniards; which, according to Hakluyt, broke the heart of old Hawkins. Attacks were made on the chief Spanish ports in the Gulf of Mexico with the usual spirit and daring; but the Spaniards were every where on the alert, and cannon-balls were more plentiful than pieces of eight had been on former occasions. At St Juan de Puerto Rico, a shot killed two of Drake's officers in his cabin, and struck the stool on which he sat, drinking a cup of beer,' from under him. Every place that he looked in upon was now armed to the teeth, and welcomed him grimly back to the scene of his former exploits. In Fuller's phrase, whilst the king of Spain guarded the head and heart of his dominions in Europe, he left his long legs in America open to blows; till finding them to smart, being beaten black and blue by the English, he • learned to arm them at last.' What little was to be got was now only won with hard blows, or by dexterous surprises. attempt to perform the march to Panama, so happily accomplished twenty years before, was repulsed with loss and disgrace'; and the scourge of the climate, always aggravated by disappointment, was upon them. It soon attacked the General, whose constitution seems never to have failed before. The flux' pursued its course with its ordinary rapidity. An hour before his death he rose and dressed himself,' muttered some incoherent speeches, was carried back to bed, and straightway died. He was buried in the sea, in the same bay of Puerto-Bello which rolls over the bones of so many of our countrymen, who perished an hundred and forty years afterward in the fatal expedition of Hosier— All o'erspent with toil and anguish, Not in glorious battle slain.'

An

Drake is perhaps the earliest of our distinguished warriors whose character bears the true professional stamp-of a man rising to eminence in the service,' living by it and for it, and devoting to it the entire energies of his life; and, both in its excellences and defects, as far as we know them, it might almost stand as the type of a class: he was framed on a model which

has been often since repeated in the annals of British heroism. His valour, as we have said, was ostentatious, as is common in men fond of popularity, conscious of great powers, and proud of having risen from obscurity by the exercise of them: his humour of bravado, the point on which his detractors were ever ready to seize, was such as men are apt to indulge in, who have chained fortune to their car until they are tempted to believe the tie inseparable. But if success sometimes made Drake arrogant, misfortune never clouded his judgment nor abated his spirit. He was accused of being intolerant of opposition: but we have already mentioned the remarkable cordiality which subsisted between him and his associates in command; and with respect to inferiors, it must be remembered that the discipline of that day was so lax, particularly in the service of adventurers,' where most officers were sharers in profit and risk, that every attempt to enforce authority was apt to be viewed as an insult. But it seems rather to be the fact that, among other talents of a popular leader, he possessed the peculiar secret of combining a seeming deference to the opinion of others, with self-dependence and decision. He was, says Prince, a willing hearer of every man's opinion, but commonly a follower of his own.' His -friends, says even Sir William Monson-a detractor from his and most other men's fame-urged in excuse of his vain-glory, 'that it was not inherent to him alone, but to most men of his profession * and rank. It is true he would speak much and arrogantly, but • eloquently; which bred a wonder in many, that his education could yield him those helps of nature. Indeed he had four properties to further his gift of speaking, (viz.) his boldness of speech, his understanding in what he spoke, his inclination to speak, and his use in speaking; and, though misdoing is a vice not to be excused, yet he obtained that fame by his actions, that facility in speaking, and that wisdom by his experience, that "I can say no more but that we are all the children of Adam.'

The researches of Mr Barrow have not added any thing material to the mere outline which we already possessed of his private life. He was twice married, but left no issue: his second wife is said to have been an heiress of the family of Sydenham of Combe Sydenham, and to have married after his death into that of Courtenay of Powderham. He made a good fortune, and managed it thriftily. His nephew, Francis Drake, inherited from him the beautiful Abbey and lands of Buckland Monachorum, between Tavistock and Plymouth, which the Admiral purchased of the Grenvilles with that Spanish gold to which a curse was long supposed to cling; for his own sophistry, and that of his fanatical friends, about the spoiling of Antichrist, never went + 2 D

VOL. LXXXI. NO. CLXII.

down with the common people. However, in spite of the double malediction attaching to Abbey lands, and Bucanier's gold, Buckland remained in his collateral line-a family of prosperous gentlemen, enjoying one of James I.'s Baronetcies-until 1794, when the last Sir Thomas Drake died. It was brought by a female descendant to another hero-Lord Heathfield-from whom it passed to females again.

6

Drake founded other two more permanent memorials of himself, in two important contributions to the public welfare ;-one, the Chest at Chatham,'-a fund for the relief of worn-out seamen, established by him and Hawkins, and now consolidated with Greenwich Hospital. More than 30,000 persons received pensions from it in 1814, its amount having greatly accumulated. The other was the famous Leat,' or Aqueduct, which conveys water to Plymouth—a remarkable piece of English engineering in that time; which, however, was not altogether a free gift, being partly undertaken with a view to profit. It was so rapidly executed as to give rise to the tradition, that the water followed the Admiral's horse's heels as he galloped from its spring to Plymouth, by virtue of a compact with the Devil; which Southey recounts along with many other legendary tales of the old warrior,' as he is still called in his native county. It was in the regular course of events, that the first of the early naval heroes of England, and first circumnavigator of the globe, like the first printer, and the first natural philosopher, should be remembered by the multitude as a Wizard or Conjurer.

In taking leave of this work, we would beg to advise the author to consult the Manuscript documents, unknown to him, to which we have referred, with any others that may have been overlooked, and (before it is reprinted, as it is likely we should think to be) to make such alterations as a careful examination. of them may suggest; and, generally, to bestow upon it such a revision as may help more and more to obtain for it a permanent place in historical literature, as the approved account of the life and actions of the energetic founder of our Naval glory.

ART. III.-Erpétologie Générale, ou Histoire Naturelle complète des Reptiles. Par A. M. C. DUMERIL, Membre de l'Institut, et G. BIBRON, Aide Naturaliste au Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. 6 tom. 8vo. Paris: 1834-41. (Still in course of publication.)

OF

F all departments of the animal kingdom, the class Reptilia is the most varied and extraordinary, whether viewed in relation to general organic structure, or the instinctive habits of particular tribes. The sluggish turtle, with its broad and massive proportions, presents a singular contrast to the agile brighteyed lizard and the slender snake; while the lurid toad, the changeful chameleon, the winged dragon, the fierce crocodile, the gigantic boa, and the poisonous cobra, exhibit a vast diversity of form and character. Their local habitations are also as varied as their name and nature. The wooded swamps of America, the burning and unscreened deserts of Africa, the jungles of Asia, the heaths of Europe, and the plains of New Holland, all produce their reptile tribes; and even the sea-encircled mariner, who voyages among the Indian Isles, beholds with wonder the aquatic species gliding serenely on the surface of the ocean, or submerging their radiant panoply amid the glittering waves, at a vast distance from any known land. Yet was the vision of the Ancient Mariner supernatural, as it behoved to be; for no

'Slimy thing does crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea."

All marine reptiles are either apodal-that is, footless-or provided merely with fin-like members.

Although thus extensively distributed over earth and ocean—

. Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms,'

the reptile race may nevertheless be said to be chiefly characteristic of the southern regions of the globe; as we find the species become less abundant in the temperate zone; while such as are native to northern countries are few in number, small in size, feeble in constitution, and of such slow and sluggish habits, as to fall into a state of deathlike torpidity during the severer season of the year. It is chiefly such as partake of a semi-aquatic nature, of which frogs and newts are familiar examples, that occur in rigorous climates, their power of supporting a languid life of hybernation in holes of the earth, the crevices of rocks and trees, or beneath the frozen surface of morasses, enabling