e Provencal, were sung by wandering
minstrels, and Portuguese poetry retained its Provencal character until
the end of the fourteenth century.

In the fifteenth century, the Portuguese invaded Africa, and Vasco de
Gama pointed out to Europe the new and unknown route to India. Fifteen
years later, toward the close of the century, a Portuguese kingdom was
founded in Hindostan, causing a strong counter-current of Orientalism
to invade Portugal. The people awoke to a desire for greatness; and
poetry and the arts flourished. This period, extending into the
sixteenth century, is called the golden age of Portuguese literature.

The Os Lusiades, an epic poem, that has been called "one of the noblest
monuments ever raised to the national glory of any people," was written
by Luis de Camoens, a Portuguese of the sixteenth century. It is
intensely patriotic, although it is touched by both Greek mythology,
and the Italian style, which during this epoch had been slightly
blended with the Portuguese. Portugal had little or no influence on the
literature of any nation but her own, receiving her strongest
impressions from outsiders. In the eighteenth century she was dominated
both in taste and manners by the French, and the beginning of the
nineteenth century found her a great admirer and imitator of English
literature.

National songs are known to have been sung in Portugal during the
earliest times; but none of them have come down to us. They were
doubtless similar to the other bardic songs of Europe.

FRENCH.

It is in the first ages of national existence that the foundations of
national character and poetry are laid; and the farther back that
history is studied, the more closely do we find the different peoples
of the world united in their literature. Its first history in France is
undoubtedly that of the Troubadours. Provence, where it originated,
early became an independent kingdom, while in the north the literature
of the Trouveres became the foundation of the national literature of
France. Latin was the language of the country after its conquest by
Julius Caesar; then came the Northern hordes, when language became
corrupted, until, in the time of Charlemagne, German was the Court
language, Latin the written language, and the Romance dialect, still in
its barbaric state, was the speech of the people. The Gauls in the
North, who used the Romance, were also called the Roman-Wallons; they
were distinguished from Charlemagn