killed, had five captains wounded, and some hundreds of seamen, or soldiers. Duquesne wrote to the French king that his ships would not be in a fit state to put to sea till after the summer, on account of the large quantity of cannon shot they had received in the battle. In spite of all the disadvantages he had to contend with-bad, small ships, useless allies who insisted on dividing the Dutch squadrons-de Ruyter's last effort had been crowned with success. The physicians did not at first fear for de Ruyter's recovery. He passed the first night without changing their opinion; but the next day the dressing of his wounds gave him intense pain, which he bore with his usual patience, saying that he cared little about his miserable body, if his soul might be saved. He prayed that patience might be given him to the end, gave particular instructions for the treatment of the wounded sailors, and again turning his thoughts to his country exclaimed,

Oh, that I must lie here, and be unable to do my duty to the country." On the fourth or fifth day of his illness, a fever set in, which he failed to throw off, and which increased day by day. He set his mind now entirely on his future state, repeating portions of Scripture, and especially the

Psalms, the 6th, 8th, and 9th verses of the 42nd Psalm, and the 71st verse of Psalm 119.

When those about him spoke of his wife and family, he said his family would have increased his trouble had they been present. He hoped to see them again in joy and eternal felicity. The fever having greatly increased on the 28th of April, began to diminish at midday of the 29th, and with it the strength of de Ruyter ebbed slowly away. He was now only anxious to go quickly. He repeated the words of the 63rd Psalm, beginning, "Oh God, thou art my God," and as speech forsook him, he indicated that he wished his chaplain to pray for a happy deliverance for him. Then he quietly endured his intense pain until between nine and ten o'clock in the night, when the little group of sorrowing officers saw that the seven days' agony had passed, and the great admiral had found peace.

The body of de Ruyter, embalmed by his friends, was sent home and buried in the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam, with all the honours his country could heap upon it. The heart and lungs were buried in a little island in the historic Bay of Syracuse, where the flowing and the ebbing tide roll daily round the resting-place.

No more in this world could the meanness and short-sightedness of admiralties or of allies affect him. The six additional warships might come or go. Never should he again push his prow through the foam-flecked waves, and hold his life at the bidding of the leaders of the State. Nor could the dukedom with which Spain hoped to honour a hero whose only thought was duty, reach him now.

In the career of de Ruyter, nothing is more remarkable than the fact that each upward step was gained without any striving for it on his part. In fact, in several cases, the greatness could only be thrust upon him when it had been pointed out to him that his duty to the State absolutely required his acceptance of it.

If we except the artistic instincts of the Dutch, then de Ruyter is the highest embodiment of the great characteristics of his race. A born sailor and trader, with the aptitudes of a business man, with a marked facility for acquiring languages, assisted by a memory which never deceived, he was endowed with a spirit of adventure, an equable perseverance which was not easily upset, and with the highest courage and resource in the face of danger. His genius for naval science was

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such that he was, in the words of Captain Mahan, with which this volume begins, "the foremost figure, not only in the Dutch service, but among all the naval officers of that age." On the other hand, he was distinctly not a politician, and his Dutch common sense, which made him despise all empty show, led him to dislike public life, while, to balance this, obedience to duty, and his vast tolerance, made him the best of citizens. truly Dutch love of the simple and even lowly in life (not observable, perhaps, nowadays to a casual onlooker), which led him to sweep out his cabin and tend his chickens after a great victory, with the warm heart he bore, made his home-life remarkable, even in Holland. The earnestness of his nation took with him the form of religion, and in so doing, it fed upon noble and simple thoughts, which made his life far higher than those of the patriarchs he studied; and to this it is partly owing that among the world's great fighting men, whose spirits have been touched with heroism, there are none whose lives have joined more real nobility and sweetness than that of the son of the beer-drawer of Flushing.*

* The de Ruyter de Wildt papers (including about 1100 letters), acquired by the Dutch Government, have now been

The land to which de Ruyter had devoted himself in life and death, calls for a word in conclusion. The signs of change in the position of Holland as a great power, and as the carrier of the world, towards the end of de Ruyter's life, had been more evident to contemporaries than they are apt to be to the reader of the brilliant exploits of her sons in those years. As the foliage of autumn, in a certain stage, resembles that of spring so closely as hardly to be distinguished from it, the decay of a nation's strength is not always at first distinguishable from its growth. The deterioration was none the less real. In this condition of things England's policy was only a single cause. France, the false friend, considered that the trade of Holland was usurped" from other nations, and in time of peace, poured her privateers into the channel at a large annual cost to Holland. The foundations of the latter's trade were being sapped, and in 1669 and 1670 it had hardly yielded any profit. Holland's expenses were large, and though her

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searched, but reveal nothing new about the admiral. The recent searches in the Archives at the Hague in connection with Venezuela have yielded nothing more with regard to him.