to the jealousy of Spain, his ally, and submission to the grant of the Pope to Ferdinand of all Western lands, deterred Henry VII, from prosecuting further attempts. The miserable death of Sir H. Willoughby withheld men from piercing the mysteries of the frozen sea. The enterprizes of the buccaneering Drake in the Spanish main, and the ill-fated Raleigh, in reaching Virginia, led neither to colonization, nor the formation of a naval fleet, though in June, 1578, Sir H. Gilbert founded the first British plantation. The merchants of England, without any encouragement from the crown, had inaugurated her commerce, by trading with Africa and Russia, Turkey and Newfoundland; and Martin Frobisher in three voyages between 1576-8, explored Labrador and Greenland; Drake in 1578, sailed round the globe,

It was the gallant Drake who worthily began the war with Philip, by destroying one hundred sail at Cadiz, on April 19, 1587, or as he termed it, singing the Don's beard; but this severe loss could not damp the superstitious enthusiasm of his subjects, or his own thirst for vengeance and conquest. Two hundred and thirty-four ships, named by the Pope Sixtus V. the Invincible Armada, on June 3, 1588, the most formidable fleet the world had ever seen, sailed forth from the Tagus. England had to oppose to this fearful enemy, nought but ships little larger than shallops, and her own brave heart. Thirty-four sail formed the royal navy; the remainder were merchant vessels and coasters, In the afternoon of July 20, the tall hulls, with turreted poops, and forecastles, bristling with the weapons of an army, in a crescent seven miles wide, were sighted by the English Admirals, Lord Howard, Drake, Frobisher, and Hawkins. A running fight began along the channel, the low swift British galleys, firing continuously into the unwieldy

Spaniards, whose cannon roared harmlessly above their decks, so low that the British tar could not, as his wont is, board his enemy. On the 28th, fire-ships blazing in the midst of the Spanish fleet, put them to rout: on their rear hung the harassing sailors of old England; and far over the shores of Flanders, Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, lay strewn the wrecks of eighty-one ships: 13,000 men never returned home to Spain: for GOD blew with His wind, and they were dispersed at the blasting of the wrath of His displeasure.

The Queen saw that England's strength lay in her navy and her commerce. The arsenals were stored with munitions of war, the royal dockyards launched ships of a size hitherto purchased from foreigners, or equipped by patriotic merchants. A trading company was encouraged with India and Russia, which found an eager rivalry in the Hollanders, who had, in a period of peace, increased their commerce and wealth, and formed the most ambitious hopes of a trans-Atlantic Empire: they held the sea-coast of Brazil, the island of Java, the Cape of Good Hope; they monopolized the trade with China and Japan; they had rounded Cape Horn, and landed in Australia; before the middle of the seventeenth century, Spain and Portugal had failed before their enterprize and arms. Internal tranquillity, foreign bigotry and bad policy driving to them industrious refugees-had filled their coffers with wealth. The famous Navigation Actthe Magna-Charta of the navy-struck the first blow against the empire of the Netherlands: it began the commercial greatness of our own country. The Dutch declared war: seven terrible actions were fought. The splendid achievements of Blake in the Channel and Mediterranean, the success of Penn and Venables in the West Indies, and the death of the gallant Van Tromp,

sealed the fate of Holland. On June 29, 1652, Feb. 10 and 18, 1653, July 31, 1653, and April 30, 1657, did that great man vindicate the honour of England: he died of wounds received in her service, and yet, to this hour, he sleeps in an unknown grave, under the very shadows of Westminster Abbey, and no monumental stone records the achievements of a name which is one of the noblest in her annals. One expiring effort Holland made in the reign of Charles II. De Ruyter, in 1665, sailed up the Medway, burned the ships that lay at Chatham, and sullied the flag of England. In 1672, while his country lay deluged beneath the sea, by the cutting of the dykes to protect it from the French, he fell, with his enemies, the Admirals of the combined fleets, De la Robiniere and the Earl of Sandwich. In 1756, the supremacy of Holland was utterly lost. Discovered, while professing neutrality, to have aided the revolt of America, England crushed her commerce and stripped her of her colonies,— her administration of which had been stained by the grossest tyranny.

Charles II. raised naval architecture to a high state of perfection; and it is a remarkable fact that, in his reign, a Form of Prayer to be used at Sea was first added to the Book of Common Prayer. James II. was an able seaman, and collected a royal fleet of 173 ships, carrying 42,000 men. William III. found an efficient marine for employment: at La Hogue, the combined navies of England, under Sir George Rooke, and of Holland destroyed 21 out of 30 sail of the French. From that hour the advance of England was rapid and sure; although, in the reign of Queen Anne, while dukedoms and palaces were the reward of useless and costly victories, in 1704 the momentous capture of Gibraltar by Sir G. Rooke and Sir Cloudesley Shovell was deemed unworthy of re

gard, and those brave seamen left unrewarded. The ses became her battle-field. From the East to the Western Indies, from the Mediterranean to the shores of Canada, from the Baltic to the Southern Ocean, passed on her brilliant march to naval supremacy, with only momentary calms. In 1739, the ballads of the day were celebrating the glory of Vernon at Porto Bello, only to be succeeded by popular enthusiasm immortalising the heroic achievements of a simultaneous war in three Continents, carried on by the valour of Wolfe, on the heights of Abraham, Sept. 13, 1759; by Amherst and Boscawen, before Louisburgh; by Pococke, on the sea, and by Clive, on land, in the East; by Hawke, Nov. 20, 1759, off the coast of France, while a hurricane increased the horrors of a dark night and a lee-shore. No place was deemed impregnable, or situation forbidding, by those gallant hearts; and in the memory of those events, the enterprize of the last circumnavigator of note, Lord Anson, was forgotten.

In the reign of George III., within seven years, Spain and France were reduced to beg terms of peace. Keppel and Hodgson, Pococke and Albemarle, Draper and Cornish, were the men who fought side by side, while twentyfive islands, a whole continent, nine fortified towns, and forty castles yielded to the arms of England, and one hundred men of war had been destroyed or added to her navy.

The voyages of Byron, Wallis, and Cook are all forgotten in the blaze of glory that surrounds the names of the worthies of the last war. Keppel, off Brest, July 27, 1778; Rodney, on Jan. 8, 1780, and over De Grasse, April 12, 1782; Hyde Parker, on Aug. 5, 1781, off the Doggerbank; Lord Howe, on June 1, 1794; Lord Bridport, on June 24, 1795; Sir John Jervis, off St. Vincent, Feb. 14, 1797; that of Duncan, at Camperdown, Oct. 11,

1797; (followed by Sidney Smith, at Acre, in May, 1799, and Lord Exmouth, at Algiers, August 27, 1816; Lord Saumarez, July 12, 1801 ;)-were but the heralds of that ever-memorable name, the imperishable remembrance of Nelson, the hero of the Nile, Aug. 1, 1798; Copenhagen, April 12, 1801; Trafalgar, October 21, 1805; the battles that gave the crystal sceptre of the seas to England. Since then, her peaceful triumphs have been those of colonisation, and, alas, fruitless exploration in the Arctic Seas.

With joy we reflect on her supremacy, for it rests not on her powerful resources, her courage, or her science, but in the blessing and favour of that Great GOD, Whom she adores. With all their careless, frank bearing, sailors are undoubtedly, as a body, beyond others religious men ; their respect to a good chaplain, and their quiet devout demeanour at the celebration of Divine Service, are facts well-known. It is but the excess of this feeling, heightened by the daily wonders of the deep, that renders them also superstitious. While Venice, Portugal, and Spain thought only of gold, and ambition, and earthly glory, the military colony and the tributary mart, the Cross of Him Who calmed the stormy wave and boisterous winds of Galilee, and gave the lives of the shipmen to His Apostle-the anchor of the soul entering within the veil, and guide to the better haven and the sure port-has been reared on every shore that owns the sway of Britain. Her Bishops and her Clergy are inviting the heathen into the ark of CHRIST's Church, and spreading in her furthest mission that knowledge which shall increase even as the waters cover the deep, until there shall be new heavens and a new earth, but "no more sea."

(Rev. xxi. 1.)

M. E. C. W.