THE ENGLISH ADMIRALS.

Most men of high destinies have high-sounding names. Pym and Habakkuk may do pretty well, but 10 they must not think to cope with the Cromwells and Isaiahs. And you could not find a better case in point than that of the English Admirals.

But it is the spirit of the men, and not their names, that I wish to speak about in this paper. That spirit is truly English; they, and not Tennyson's cottonspinners or Mr. D'Arcy Thompson's Abstract Bagman, are the true and typical Englishmen.

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Duncan, lying off the Texel with his own flagship, the Venerable, and only one other vessel, heard that 20 the whole Dutch fleet was putting to sea. He told Captain Hotham to anchor alongside of him in the narrowest part of the channel, and fight his vessel till she sank. "I have taken the depth of the

water," added he, "and when the Venerable goes down, my flag will still fly." And you observe this is no naked Viking in a historic period; but a Scotch member of Parliament, with a smattering of the 5 classics, a telescope a cocked hat of great size, and flannel underclothing. In the same spirit, Nelson went into Aboukir with six colors flying; so that even if five were shot away, it should not be imagined he had struck. He too must needs wear his four 10 stars outside his Admiral's frock, to be a butt for sharp-shooters. "In honor I gained them," he said to objectors, adding with sublime illogicality, "in honor I will die with them." Captain Douglas of the Royal Oak, when the Dutch fired his vessel in 15 the Thames, sent his men ashore, but was burned along with her himself rather than desert his post without orders. Just then, perhaps the Merry Monarch was chasing a moth round the supper-table with the ladies of his court. When Raleigh sailed into 20 Cadiz, and all the forts and ships opened fire on him at once, he scorned to shoot a gun, and made answer with a flourish of insulting trumpets. I like this bravado better than the wisest dispositions to insure victory; it comes from the heart and goes to it. God 25 has made nobler heroes, but he never made a finer gentleman than Walter Raleigh. And as our Admirals were full of heroic superstitions, and had a strutting and vainglorious style of fight, so they discovered a startling eagerness for battle. When the news 30 came to Essex before Cadiz that the attack had been

decided, he threw his hat into the sea. It is in this way that a schoolboy hears of a half-holiday; but this was a bearded man of great possessions who had just been allowed to risk his life. Benbow could not lie still in his bunk after he had lost his leg; he must 5 be on deck in a basket to direct and animate the fight. Trowbridge went ashore with the Culloden, and was able to take no part in the battle of the Nile. "The merits of that ship and her gallant captain,' wrote Nelson to the Admiralty," are too well known 10 to benefit by anything I could say. Her misfortune was great in getting aground, while her more fortunate companions were in the full tide of happiness.' This is a notable expression, and depicts the whole great-hearted, big-spoken stock of the English Ad- 15 mirals to a hair. It was to be "in the full tide of happiness" for Nelson to destroy five thousand five hundred and twenty-five of his fellow-creatures, and have his own scalp torn open by a piece of langridge shot. Hear him again at Copenhagen: "A shot 20 through the mainmast knocked the splinters about; and he observed to one of his officers with a smile, It is warm work, and this may be the last to any of us at any moment;' and then, stopping short at the gangway, added, with emotion, But, mark you-I 25 would not be elsewhere for thousands.'"

I must tell one more story, which has lately been made familiar to us all, and that in one of the noblest ballads in the English language. I had written my tame prose abstract, I shall beg the reader to believe, 30

when I had no notion that the sacred bard designed an immortality for Grenville. Sir Richard Grenville was Vice-Admiral to Lord Thomas Howard, and lay off the Azores with the English squadron in 1591. 5 He was a noted tyrant to his crew; a dark, bullying fellow apparently; and it is related of him that he would chew and swallow wineglasses, by way of convivial levity, till the blood ran out of his mouth. When the Spanish fleet of fifty sail came within sight 10 of the English, his ship, the Revenge, was the last to weigh anchor, and was so far circumvented by the Spaniards, that there were but two courses openeither to turn her back upon the enemy or sail through one of his squadrons. The first alternative Grenville 15 dismissed as dishonorable to himself, his country, and her Majesty's ship. Accordingly, he chose the latter, and steered into the Spanish armament. Several vessels he forced to luff and fall under his lee; until, about three o'clock of the afternoon, a great ship of three 20 decks of ordnance took the wind out of his sails, and immediately boarded. Thenceforward, and all night long, the Revenge held her own single-handed against the Spaniards. As one ship was beaten off, another took its place. She endured, according to Raleigh's computation, "eight hundred shot of great artillery, besides many assaults and entries." By morning the powder was spent, the pikes all broken, not a stick was standing, "nothing left overhead either for flight or defense; six feet of water in the hold; almost all 30 the men hurt; and Grenville himself in a dying con

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dition. To bring them to this pass, a fleet of fifty sail had been mauling them for fifteen hours, the Admiral of the Hulks and the Ascension of Seville had both gone down alongside, and two other vessels had taken refuge on shore in a sinking state. Hawke's words, they had "taken a great deal of drubbing." The captain and crew thought they had done about enough; but Grenville was not of this opinion; he gave orders to the master gunner, whom he knew to be a fellow after his own stamp, to scuttle the Revenge where she lay. The others, who were not mortally wounded like the Admiral, interfered with some decision, locked the master gunner in his cabin, after having deprived him of his sword, for he manifested an intention to kill himself if he were not to sink the 15 ship; and sent to the Spaniards to demand terms. These were granted. The second or third day after, Grenville died of his wounds aboard the Spanish flagship, leaving his contempt upon the "traitors and dogs" who had not chosen to do as he did, and engage 20 fifty vessels, well found and fully manned, with six inferior craft ravaged by sickness and short of stores. He at least, he said, had done his duty as he was bound to do, and looked for everlasting fame.

Some one said to me the other day that they con- 25 sidered this story to be of a pestilent example. I am not inclined to imagine we shall ever be put into any practical difficulty from a superfluity of Grenvilles. And besides, I demur to the opinion. The worth of such actions is not a thing to be decided in a quaver 30