d underwent the
fatal blow without shrinking or alteration of position. He died in his
sixty-sixth year.

[Illustration: Raleigh parting from his wife.]

Raleigh sat in several Parliaments, and took an active part in the
business of the house. His speeches, preserved in the Journals, are
said by Mr. Tytler to be remarkable for an originality and freedom of
thought far in advance of the time. His expression was varied and
animated, and his powers of conversation remarkable. His person was
dignified and handsome, and he excelled in bodily accomplishments and
martial exercises. He was very fond of paintings, and of music; and,
in literature as in art, he possessed a cultivated and correct taste.
He was one of those rare men who seem qualified to excel in all
pursuits alike; and his talents were set off by an extraordinary
laboriousness and capacity of application. As a navigator, soldier,
statesman, and historian, his name is intimately and honorably linked
with one of the most brilliant periods of British history.

MILES STANDISH[19]

By ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS

(1584-1656)

[Footnote 19: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

[Illustration: Relics of Miles Standish.]

Three hundred years ago the house of Standish was a notable one in
England. The family had numerous possessions; their Lancashire estate
of Duxbury Hall, in the shadow of Rivington Pike and the Pennine
Hills, was pleasant and extensive, and there they had lived for
generations, as there they live to-day. Of this Lancashire home was
that John Standish, "squire to the king," who killed Wat Tyler, the
agitator, on that memorable June day of 1381 when the boy-king of
England, Richard the Second, so pluckily faced his rebellious subjects
on the plain of Smithfield; of it was that Sir John Standish who
fought under the leopard-banner of King Edward at the stone mill of
Crecy; and of it was that gallant soldier Miles Standish, the Puritan
captain, the first commissioned military officer of New England,
famous in American history, song, and story, as the stay and bulwark
of the Pilgrims of Plymouth in their days of struggle and beginning.

Miles Standish (or Myles, as the old spelling has it) was born in
Lancashire, presumably in the family manor house of Duxbury Hall, in
the year 1584. The story of his life is simple. The absolute facts
upon which it is based are meagre, but enough is known to warrant the
assertion that Miles Standish was heir