150 SOLDIERS AND SAILORS away from England, says Hall, the common people thought the sun had gone out of the heavens. His personality cast a charm over even Louis XI. The heart of the Yorkist party, he was true to its cause till he found that his service was no longer desired. He was not the man to sit quietly under insult, and when it came from King Edward, who owed all that he was to him, it was more than he could endure. Vet it was only When he found his every project thwarted, and especially those that were dearest to his heart, that he was driven into open war- fare with the king. His treason is capable of much justification : he cannot be accused of forsaking his master. He had in him the making of a great king, and how great and useful might have been his career had fortune placed him over the councils of a Charles VII. or a Henry VI. ! As it is, he stands in worth and character far above any of his time, a figure that commands not merely admira- tion but affection. HERNANDO CORTES* BY H. RIDER HAGGARD (1485-1547) A : MONO the millions that from age to age are born into this world there arise in every generation one or two pre- eminent men and women who are objects of the wonder and the envy, the admira- tion and the hatred of their contemporaries, and whose names, after their deaths, stand out as landmarks by which we .shape a course across the dark and doubtful seas of history. Caesar and Cromwell, Mahomet and Napoleon, to mention no others, were such men, and such a man was Hernando Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico. They have been called, and well called, Men of Destiny, since it is impossible in studying their lives and tracing their vast influence upon human affairs, to avoid the conclusion that they were raised up and ei> dowed with great talents and opportunities in order that by their agency the ends of Providence might be shaped. Hernando Cortes was born of a good family, at the town of Medellin in Spain, in 1485, and educated at the college of Salamanca. At the age of nineteen having proved himself unfit to follow the profession of the law to whicii his pa- rents had destined him, he emigrated to the Indian Island of Hispaniola where he 'Copyright, i8p.i, by Selmar Hess.
