caused by the fall of Cyprus, brought about after many
negotiations, a league between the Republic, the Papacy, and the Spanish
monarchy. A mighty naval armament was to be gathered together, and its
commander was to be Don John of Austria. His success in subduing the
Moriscoes naturally designated him, in spite of his extreme youth, for
this high command. His operations, indeed, had been so far chiefly on
land, but in the sixteenth century, a man might one day command a
squadron of cavalry and on the next, a squadron of galleys. General and
admiral were convertible terms. There was, indeed, some division of
labor. Sailors navigated and soldiers fought the ship. And, as there is
more resemblance between the row-galleys of Don John's epoch and the
steam driven vessels of our times than there is between these and the
ships which Nelson and Collingwood led to victory, perhaps we shall
return to the old state of things and again send our soldiers to sea!

To return, however, to our hero, who has meanwhile subdued the Moriscoes
and returned to Madrid before setting out to take command of the great
fleet at Messina. One, however, there was who did not return with the
Prince to Madrid, one who was no longer to be his "guide, philosopher,
and friend." The faithful Quijada had been struck by a musket-ball in a
fight at Seron, in which Don John himself, in rallying his troops, had a
narrow escape. After a week of suffering, the brave knight expired in
the arms of his foster-son, February 24, 1570. "We may piously trust,"
says the chronicler,[A] "that the soul of Don Luis rose up to heaven
with the sweet incense which burned on the altars of St. Jerome at
Caniles; for he spent his life, and finally lost it, in fighting like a
valiant soldier of the faith."

Before relating the episodes of the great victory of Lepanto, it will
not be inopportune to glance at one of the great evils, that of slavery,
which the Turkish power entailed on so many thousands of Christians.
Nowadays, thousands of travellers pass freely, to and fro, from the
Straits of Gibraltar to the Suez Canal, and from one part of the
Mediterranean to another. Our markets are supplied with fruits and
vegetables from Algiers. Our Sovereign has no fears, except as to
sanitary arrangements, when she sojourns on the northern shores of the
Mediterranean. A cruise in an unarmed yacht on its waters is the
pleasantest of pastimes. It is, therefore, hard for us to conceive what