Heroes of the Elizabethan Age. By Edward Gilliat. (Seeley and
Co. 5s.)—Mr. Gilliat begins his book with a lively sketch of the Elizabethan world, of persons from the Queen downwards—can it be said that Elizabeth was of "striking beauty "P—and of many things, from men-of-war—a ship was worth 412,000 in those days— down to tobacco-pipes. Then he begins his roll of heroes with Sir John Hawkins. And what a catalogue--emphatically a catalogue raisonne—it is that he presents ! Martin Frobisher, Humphrey Gilbert, Richard Grenville, Francis Drake, Philip Sidney, and Walter Ralegh are in it, and we have taken only the most famous names. One reads the story of these heroes with some mixture of feeling. The powers at home seem not to have given them all the appreciation which they deserved, and yet we can see that they created a situation which was not easy to deal with, especially when the equilibrium of England was so unstable. The one inex- cusably base thing was the sacrifice of Ralegh to Spanish hatred by King James. Queen Elizabeth may have been parsimonious, jealous, mean, but she was incapable of descending to such infamy. Mr. Gilliat has done his task very well.
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