and took every opportunity of introducing among its Fellows men of learning and reputation, one of whom was the celebrated John Hales. Savile is said to have been stern in his theory and practice of discipline respecting the scholars. He preferred boys of steady habits and resolute industry to the more showy but more flighty students. He looked on the sprightly wits, as they were termed, with dislike and distrust. According to his judgment, irregularity in study was sure to be accompanied by irregularity in other things. He used to say, "Give me the plodding student. If I would look for wits, I would go to Newgate: there be the wits." James the First, on his accession to the throne of England, expressed a particular regard for Savile, and offered him preferment either in Church or State. Savile, however, declined all offers of further promotion, and only accepted the honour of knighthood, which was conferred on him at Windsor in 1604.

In the same year in which Savile was knighted he had the misfortune to lose his only son; and, having now no one to inherit his name and estate, he resolved to consecrate his fortune to the advancement of learning. He himself defrayed the expense of the splendid edition of St. Chrysostom, which was printed at the Eton College press, and which is said to have cost him no less than 80007. He also founded two new professorships at Oxford, one of geometry and one of astronomy, the first appointments to which he obtained for Henry Briggs and John Bainbridge. The French biographer of Savile remarks how many eminent men have filled the mathematical chair which Savile founded. Among them he enumerates, with just praise, Wren, Wallis, Halley, Gregory, Keill, Bradley, and Hornby.

Savile certainly deserves the credit of having been almost the founder of the study at Oxford; for, in the preamble of the deed by which he endowed his two professorships, he recites that at that time "Geometry was almost totally unknown and abandoned in England." As above mentioned, Briggs was his first mathematical professor; but Aubrey says that Savile first sent for Gunter for this purpose, who "coming with his sector and quadrant, fell to resolving of triangles, and doing a great many fine things. Said the grave knight, 'Do you call this reading of geometrie? this is showing of tricks, man;' and so dismissed him with scorn, and sent for Briggs."

Savile was also a munificent donor of valuable books and manuscripts to Oxford; and he paid the expense of the new font of Greek types which was cast for the press of that university.

He obtained an European reputation for scholarship, not merely by his great edition of Chrysostom, but also by a version of Tacitus, with notes which were thought worthy in the next century of being translated into Latin, and published on the continent by Gruterius. He was also the first Englishman that contributed to the modern scholar's knowledge of ancient antiquities. He published, in 1598, his "View of Certain Military Matters, or Commentaries concerning Roman Warfare:" a work which Hallam terms "one displaying an independent and extensive erudition;" and which was translated into Latin and printed at Heidelburg as early as 1601.

But, after all, Sir Henry's fame rests mainly on the great fact that he was one of the learned and pious men to whom we owe our present Translation of the Bible. His name appears among those to whom the Four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Apocalypse, were allotted, as their peculiar task.

Sir Henry Savile died at Eton on February 19th, 1621. He is buried in the College Chapel. He was married, but left no family. An amusing anecdote is told of Lady Savile, who, like the wives of other hard-reading men, was jealous of her husband's books. The date of the anecdote is the time when Savile was preparing his great edition of Chrysostom. "This work," we are told, "required such long and close application, that Sir Henry's lady thought herself neglected; and coming to him one day into his study, she said, 'Sir Henry, I would I were a book too, and then you would a little more respect me.' To which, one standing by, replied, 'You must then be an almanack, madam, that he might change you every year,' which answer, it is added, displeased her a fact that we can readily believe. The same lady, when Sir Henry was ill, threatened to burn Chrysostom, for killing her husband, but was dissuaded by an eulogy from Mr. Bois on the sweet preaching of the Saint of the Golden Mouth." (Chalmers' Biog. Dict.-Biographie Universelle.)

ADMIRAL GILBERT.

SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT, one of that bold band of English mariners, who threw such lustre on the reign of Elizabeth, was a native of Devonshire, and half-brother to Sir Walter Raleigh. He was born in 1539. He was educated at Eton, and for a short time studied at Oxford: he was also entered at the Temple. The intellectual training which Gilbert thus received in early youth, bore ample fruit during the active scenes in which the rest of his life was past. For he, like his illustrious kinsman, and most of the other Elizabethan heroes, combined the various glories of the scholar, the orator, the author, the sailor and the soldier, and the statesman. Being introduced at court by an aunt who was in the Queen's service, young Gilbert was easily led to forsake the legal for a military career; and he soon distinguished himself in the expedition to Havre, which took place in 1563, and also on other occasions. He was intrusted, while quite a young man, with the arduous and responsible duty of quelling Fitzmorris's rebellion in Ireland; and so ably did he conduct himself there, that he rose to be Commander-in-chief and Governor of the Province of Munster; and received the honour of knighthood from the Lord Deputy, Sir Henry Sidney, on New-Year's day, 1570. On his return to England he married a lady of large fortune, and in 1571 was returned to the House of Commons a member for Plymouth. He distinguished himself by the force and grace of his oratory in the English Parliament, as he had previously done in the Irish House of Commons, in which he had held a seat during his Munster command. He was employed in active service in the Netherlands in 1572; and, on his return, he diligently applied his mind to the question of the existence of a north-west passage round America; a problem which has never ceased to occupy the adventurous spirits of this country. He published, in 1576, his "Discourse to prove a passage by the north-west to Cathaia and the East Indies." This treatise is preserved in Hakluyt's old collection of voyages, and it well deserves perusal. It shows its author to have been a man of great learning and information, and a good logician, though more happy in opposing the theories of others than in supporting his own. Some of the reasons which he gives to prove "what

commodities would ensue, this passage once discovered," are worth quotation, for the light which they throw on the state of England at the time, and the proof they give of the antiquity of the prescription of emigration, as a panacea for the nation's ills. Gilbert says: "Also we might inhabite some part of those countryes, and settle there such needy people of our countrey, which now trouble the common wealth, and through want here at home, are enforced to commit outrageous offences, whereby they are dayly consumed with the gallows." "Also

here we shall increase both our ships and mariners without burdening the state, and also have occasion to set poore men's children to learn handicraftes, and thereby to make trifles and such like, which the Indians and those people do so much esteeme; by reason whereof there should be none occasion to have our countrey combred with loiterers, vagabonds, and such like idle persons." Gilbert professes his readiness to offer himself to bring these things into effect; and to prove that he has laboured to make himself sufficient for the enterprise, he alludes to some scientific improvements which he had devised in the mariner's card, and in the instrument for determining the longitude; and his concluding words worthily express the heroism which all the actions of his life attested. "Give me leave without offence always to live and die in this mind, that he is not worthy to live at all, that for feare or danger of death shunneth his countrey's service, and his owne honour: seeing death is inevitable, and the fame of vertue immortall. Wherefore in this behalf, 'Mutare vel timere sperno."

Two years after the publication of this treatise, Sir Humphrey obtained a most ample patent from the Crown, authorising him to occupy and colonise any parts of the North American continent that were not already in the possession of any of the Queen's allies. This was the first scheme of British colonisation in America. Sir Humphrey sailed forth, not as a mere explorer and transient visitor of new regions, but as the permanent occupant and future ruler of a new world. The right of an English Queen to assume as her own, and to deal with as her own, all such lands beyond the pale of Christendom as might be discovered in her name, was implicitly believed in by the English of that age. And Queen Elizabeth had granted to Gilbert as his own for ever all such "heathen and barbarous countries as he might discover," with absolute authority there both by sea and land. The sole reser

vations in favour of the English Crown were, that he and his successors should do homage to Elizabeth and her successors, and that they should render a tribute of the fifth part of all gold and silver that the new regions might produce. Gilbert, accompanied by Raleigh,' sailed at once for the New World with a small squadron, but was soon driven back by stress of weather to England with the loss of one of his best ships. Undismayed by this repulse, Sir Humphrey sailed again in 1583, and reaching Newfoundland in the month of August in that year, he took formal possession of the territory round the harbour of St. John's.' He granted several leases of land in his projected colony to the adventurers who were with him, and though none of them remained at Newfoundland that winter, several afterwards returned and took possession of their allotments by virtue of Sir Humphrey's grants. It is, therefore, with justice that Sir Humphrey Gilbert has been

3 Sir Walter Raleigh, step-brother to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, was one of his companions in this enterprise; and although it proved unsuccessful, the instructions of Sir Humphrey could not fail to be of service to Raleigh, who at this time was not much above twenty-five, while the Admiral must have been in the maturity of his years and abilities.-Tytler's Life of Raleigh; Warburton's Conquest of Canada.

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4" Raleigh, who by this time had risen into favour with the Queen, did not embark on the expedition, but he induced his royal mistress to take so deep an interest in its success that, on the eve of its sailing from Plymouth, she commissioned him to convey to Sir H. Gilbert her earnest wishes for his success, with a special token of regard— a little trinket representing an anchor guided by a lady. The following was Raleigh's letter, written from the Court :- Brother,—I have sent you a token from her Majesty, an anchor guided by a Lady, as you see; and further, her Highness willed me to send you word, that she wished you as great good hap and safety to your ship as if she herself were there in person, desiring you to have care of yourself as of that which she tendereth; and therefore, for her sake, you must provide for it accordingly. Farther, she commandeth that you leave your picture with me. For the rest I leave till our meeting, or to the report of this bearer, who would needs be the messenger of this good news. So I commit you to the will and protection of God, who sends us such life and death as he shall please or hath appointed. Richmond, this Friday morning. Your true brother, Walter Raleigh.'-This letter is indorsed as having been received March 18, 1582-3, and it may be remarked that it settles the doubt as to the truth of Prince's story of the golden anchor, questioned by Campbell in his Lives of the Admirals. In the Heroōlogia Anglica, p. 65, there is a fine print of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, taken evidently from an original picture; but, unlike the portrait mentioned by Grainger, it does not bear the device mentioned in the text. Raleigh's letter explains this difference. When Sir Humphrey was at Plymouth, on the eve of sailing, the Queen commands him, we see, to leave his picture with Raleigh. This must allude to a portrait already painted; and of course the golden anchor then sent could not be seen in it. Now, he perished on the voyage. The picture at Devonshire House, mentioned by Grainger, which bears this honourable badge, must therefore have been painted after his death."-Tytler's Raleigh, p. 45; Grainger's Biographical History, vol. i. p. 246; Cayley, vol. i. p. 31 ; Prince's Worthies of Devonshire; Warburton's Conquest of Canada.