tor or chancellor or patron Prince
Henry was so closely connected, for which he once provided house room,
and in which his benefactions earned him the title of "Protector of the
studies of Portugal" is given to illustrate his life as a student and a
man of science; the mother church of the order of Christ at Thomar may
remind us of another side of his life--as a military monk, grand master
of an order of religious chivalry which at least professed to bind its
members to a single life, and which under his lead took an active part
in the exploration and settlement of the African coasts and the Atlantic
islands.

The portraits of Columbus, Da Gama, and Albuquerque, which conclude this
set of illustrations, are given as portraits of three of Prince Henry's
more or less conscious disciples and followers, of three men who did
most to realise his schemes. The first of these, who owed to Portuguese
advance towards the south the suggestion of corresponding success in the
west, and who found America by the western route to India,--as Henry had
planned nearly a century before to round Africa and reach Malabar by the
eastern and southern way,--was the nearest of the Prince's successful
imitators in time, the greatest in achievement; he was not a mere
follower of the Portuguese initiative, for he struck out a new line or
at least a neglected one, made the greatest of all geographical
additions to human knowledge, and took the most daring plunge into the
unknown that has ever been taken--but Columbus, beside his independent
position and interest, was certainly on one side a disciple of Henry the
Navigator, and drew much of his inspiration from the impulse that the
Prince had started. Da Gama, the first who sailed direct from Lisbon to
India round Africa, and Albuquerque, the maker, if not the founder, of
the Portuguese empire in the East, were simply the realisers of the vast
ambitions that take their start from the work and life of Prince Henry,
and he has a right to claim them as two leading champions of his plans
and policy. In many points Albuquerque, like Columbus, is more than a
follower; but in the main outline of his achievement he follows upon the
work of other men, and, among these men, of none so much as the Hero of
Portugal and of modern discovery.

Lastly. I have to thank many friends generally for their constant
kindness and readiness to assist in any way, and in particular several
for the most generous and valuable he