the heir of John the Great and his unfortunate successor
(1433-8), unlucky as most literary princes, but deserving whatever
courage and honesty and the best gifts can deserve, was a good ruler, a
good son, a good brother, a good lawyer, and one of the earliest writers
in his own Portuguese. As a pupil of his father's great Chancellor, John
of the Rules, he has left a tract on the _Ordering of Justice_; as a
king, two others, on _Pity_ and _A Loyal Councillor_; as a cavalier, _A
Book of Good Riding_. Still more to our purpose, he was always at the
side of his brother Henry, helped him in his schemes and brought his
movement into fashion at a critical time, when enterprise seemed likely
to slacken in the face of unending difficulties.

But the Navigator's right-hand man was his next brother Pedro the
Traveller, who, after visiting all the countries of Western Europe and
fighting with the Teutonic knights against the heathen Prussians,
brought back to Portugal for the use of discovery that great mass of
suggestive material, oral and written, in maps and plans and books,
which was used for the first ocean voyages of Henry's sailors.

On his judgment and advice, more than of any other man, Henry relied,
and after Edward's death it was due to him as Regent that the generous
support of the past was more than kept up, that so many ships and men
were found for the rounding of Cape Verde, and that Edward's son and
heir Affonso V., was trained in the mind of his father and his uncle, to
be their successor in leading the expansion of Portugal and of
Christendom.

[Illustration: AISLE IN BATALHA CHURCH CONTAINING THE TOMBS OF HENRY AND
HIS BROTHERS.]

John and Ferdinand, Henry's two younger brothers, are not of much
importance in his work, though they were both of the same rare quality
as the elder Infantes, and the worst disaster of Henry's life, the
Tangier campaign, is closely bound up with the fate of "Fernand the
Constant Prince," but as we pass from the earlier story of Portugal to
the age of its great achievements, it would be hard to doubt or to
forget that the mother of the Navigator was also of some account in the
shaping of the heroes of her house. Through her at least the Lusitanian
Prince of Thomson's line is half an Englishman:

"The Lusitanian prince, who, Heaven-inspired,
To love of useful glory roused mankind,
And in unbounded commerce mixed the world."

[NOTE 1.--The Old Roman Lusitania, but wit