ht battles by sea as well as by land. Nor had the
impulse which nautical science received at the close of the fifteenth
century produced any new division of labour. At Flodden the right wing
of the victorious army was led by the Admiral of England. At Jarnac and
Moncontour the Huguenot ranks were marshalled by the Admiral of France.
Neither John of Austria, the conqueror of Lepanto, nor Lord Howard of
Effingham, to whose direction the marine of England was confided when
the Spanish invaders were approaching our shores, had received the
education of a sailor. Raleigh, highly celebrated as a naval commander,
had served during many years as a soldier in France, the Netherlands,
and Ireland. Blake had distinguished himself by his skilful and valiant
defence of an inland town before he humbled the pride of Holland and
of Castile on the ocean. Since the Restoration the same system had been
followed. Great fleets had been entrusted to the direction of Rupert
and Monk; Rupert, who was renowned chiefly as a hot and daring cavalry
officer, and Monk, who, when he wished his ship to change her course,
moved the mirth of his crew by calling out, "Wheel to the left!"

But about this time wise men began to perceive that the rapid
improvement, both of the art of war and of the art of navigation, made
it necessary to draw a line between two professions which had hitherto
been confounded. Either the command of a regiment or the command of
a ship was now a matter quite sufficient to occupy the attention of
a single mind. In the year 1672 the French government determined to
educate young men of good family from a very early age especially for
the sea service. But the English government, instead of following this
excellent example, not only continued to distribute high naval commands
among landsmen, but selected for such commands landsmen who, even on
land, could not safely have been put in any important trust. Any lad
of noble birth, any dissolute courtier for whom one of the King's
mistresses would speak a word, might hope that a ship of the line, and
with it the honour of the country and the lives of hundreds of brave
men, would be committed to his care. It mattered not that he had never
in his life taken a voyage except on the Thames, that he could not
keep his feet in a breeze, that he did not know the difference between
latitude and longitude. No previous training was thought necessary; or,
at most, he was sent to make a short trip in