DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

( 28 ) and unbroken line of heroes of whom Nelson, we may feel confident, has not been the last. The Elizabethan era possessed a not less attrac- tive hero in Sir Walter Raleigh, a younger son of good family and small fortune, endowed with an adventurous and enterprising disposition. Through the influence of some friends he became acquainted with the Queen, whose notice he attracted by his fine presence, and whose favour he gained by the following circumstance. One day a heavy shower having fallen before her Majesty went out for her daily walk, the Queen’s progress was impeded by a pool of mud. Elizabeth paused for a minute. Raleigh, who on that eventful day had donned a splendid purple velvet cloak, in the purchase of which he had invested the best part of his small capital, slipped it off hastily, and spread it on the ground before the Queen’s feet, whereupon, says the chronicler, the Queen trod gently over it, rewarding him afterwards with many suits for his free tender of so fair a foot-cloth. Soon afterwards Raleigh was standing near a window in the palace, when, feigning not to see the Queen, who stood close by, he wrote on the glass pane with the point of a diamond, ‘ Fain would | climb but that I fear to fall,’ Elizabeth stepped forward and wrote underneath, ‘If thy heart fail thee do not climb at all.’