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 176 SOLDIERS AND SAILORS his astonishment, found Henry on the floor playing hobby-horse for his children. " Are you a father ?" asked Henry, looking up without any apparent embarrass- ment. "Yes, your majesty." "Then we will finish our game," said the king. And he did so, before taking up his business with the ambassador. The whole tenor of Henry's life exhibits a lofty, generous, forgiving temper, the fearless spirit which loves the excitement of danger, and that suavity of feel- jng and manners, which, above all qualities, wins the affection of those who come within its sphere: it does not exhibit high moral or religious principle. But his weaknesses were those which the world most readily pardons, especially in a great man. If Henry had emulated the pure morals and fervent piety of his noble ancestor, Louis IX., he would have been a far better king, as well as a better man ; yet we doubt whether in that case his memory would have been cherished with such enthusiastic attachment by his countrymen. SIR FRANCIS DRAKE (154^1596) F' 'RANCis DRAKE, the first British cir- cumnavigator of the globe, was born in Devonshire, of humble parents. So much is admitted ; with respect to the date of his birth, and the method of his nurture, the annalists, Camden and Stowe, are not agreed. By the latter we are told that Drake was born at Tavistock, about 1545, and brought up under the care of a kinsman, the well-known navigator, Sir John Hawkins. Camden, on the other hand, anticipates his birth by several years, and says that he was bound apprentice to a small shipowner on the coast of Kent, who, dying unmarried, in reward of his industry bestowed his bark upon him as a legacy. Both accounts agree that in 1567 he went with Hawkins to the West Indies on a trading voyage, which gave its color to the rest of his life. Their little squadron was obliged by stress of weather to put into St. Juan de Ulloa, on the coast of Mexico ; where, after being received with a show of amity, it was beset and attacked by a superior force, and only two vessels escaped. To make amends for his losses in this adventure, in the quaint lan- guage of the biographer Prince, in his " Worthies of Devon," " Mr. Drake was