from rock to rock with fearless activity, was equally discreditable to its defenders, who either did not appreciate the worth of their charge or else had not the courage to hold it as such a trust should have been held.  But when England closed her strong hand upon it, nothing could open it again, neither motives of profit nor motives of fear.  In 1729 Spain offered no less than ten million dollars for its return.  A great sum in those times, and to offer to a people who had been impoverished by long wars!  But the descendants of those sea-kings, Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, who had carried England’s flag and England’s renown into every sea, would not part with the brightest jewel in her crown, and for a price.  Three times, too, the besieger has appeared before Gibraltar, and vainly.  From 1779 to 1782 France and Spain exhausted all their resources in a three-years’ siege, which is one of the most remarkable episodes in military history.  By sea and by land, by blockade, by bombardment, by assault, was it pressed.  But the tenacity of England was more than a match for the fire and pride of France and Spain, and it ended in signal and disastrous failure.

Glance for a moment at the history of the seizure of Malta.  For generations the value of this citadel had been known.  All the strong nations of Europe had looked with covetous eyes upon it.  But it was a difficult thing to find any pretext for its capture.  It was held by the Knights of St. John, the decrepit remnant of an order whose heroism had many times been the shield of Christendom against the Turk, and whose praise had once filled the whole earth.  They were now as inoffensive as they were incapable.  Their helplessness was their true defence,—­and the memory of their good deeds.  At last, in 1798, Napoleon, on his way to Egypt, partly by force and partly by treaty, obtained possession of it.  So strong were its fortresses, that he himself acknowledged that the knights needed only to have shut their gates against him to have baffled him.  Two years after, the English, watching their time, by blockade, starved out the French garrison.  Its new owners held it with their usual determination.  Rather than surrender it,—­though they had made treaty-stipulations to that effect,—­they deliberately entered upon a ten-years’ war with France.  The indignation which Napoleon felt, and the language which he used, show that he knew the value of the prize for which he was struggling.  “I would rather,” said he, “see you in possession of Montmartre than in possession of Malta.”  “Malta gives the dominion of the Mediterranean; I thus lose the most important sea in the world, and the respect of Europe.  Let the English obtain a port to put into; to that I have no objection; but I am determined that they shall not have two Gibraltars in one sea,—­one at the entrance, and one in the middle.”  Nevertheless he was forced to yield to destiny stronger than his own iron will.  Eleven years more found him in sad exile, and the British flag still waving over the Valetta.