Many wonderful acts of individual heroism are recorded, but the particulars of most of them are very harrowing, and we do not feel disposed to repeat the detail of them. The not-unmatched adventure of a female sailor and warrior having served all through the action is an incident of Lepanto. Another noteworthy incident is that the author of 'Don Quixote' was a combatant, and was wounded in the fight. It could hardly have occurred to any mind in the vast Christian armament that a private sentinel there present would shortly with his quill win a fame which would spread farther than, and last as long as, the renown of their great admiral! Sword and pen, we perceive, were represented in this great fight, each by one of its most glorious votaries. The Captain-General, in his despatches, greatly extolled the gallantry of all under his command. He was four-and-twenty years of age; he had won a sea-battle which must always be famous; and his own courage and conduct had contributed in a principal degree to the glorious issue.
To obtain any idea of the furor which this victory awakened all over Europe, it is necessary first to realise the terror inspired by the Turks of those days, when the Grand Signior was not "a sick man," but the most formidable and most dreaded of potentates. Perhaps the relief which the victory of the Nile brought to the despair of the Western Powers, then aghast at the prevailing fury of the French Revolution, comes near to that which followed Lepanto. The cannon of Nelson, as historians assure us, resounded over all Europe; in the same way, and for a similar reason, the cannon and the achievement of Don John were the great theme of the time, were
for words in the mouth of every one. The victor was, for a season, at the very summit of European fame. He sent the green standard of the Prophet to King Philip, the Sultan's banner to the Pope, and letters of felicitation to the Emperor and the Doge of Venice. But one reads with pleasure that, in the hour of his supreme success, he wrote a special despatch to gentle Doña Magdalena.
After a few rather feeble essays after further action, the fleets separated and sailed to winter quarters, Don John returning to Messina.
Religion, sculpture, painting, poetry had now only one subject, the victory and the victors of Lepanto. The capitals of the south of Europe shone and resounded with the signs of triumph. Holiday was universally indulged in, and Church ceremonies shared with brilliant fêtes the waking hours of civic multitudes. Presents, decorations, addresses were events of every day. An ovation was decreed to Colonna in the Eternal City; and now it was that Pope Pius made his remarkable application of the Scriptural passage, "Fuit homo missus a Deo, cui nomen erat Joannes." Don John's first reception, and a magnificent one it was, was given to him at Messina. It was only the first of many tributes, in offering which the cities of the South vied with each other in pomp and in the attribution of praise. The young conqueror's head was not turned with all the worship that he received, which shows how strong and well-balanced a head it was. But the head, without any flightiness, and with the highest warrant for the dream, did now seriously incline to the belief that it would shortly be surmounted by a territorial
