the spot where Vasco da Gama spent the night before he
sailed on his epoch-making voyage. But it was not gold that raised the
noblest memorial to Portugal's greatness: it was the genius of Luis de
Camoens. If Spenser, instead of losing himself in mazes of allegoric
romance, had sung of Crecy and Agincourt, of Drake, Frobisher, and
Raleigh, he might have given us a national epic in the same sense in
which the term applies to _The Lusiads_. With such a history, so
written in stone and song, what wonder if pride of race is one of the
mainsprings of Portuguese character!

But the House of Aviz, like the legitimate line of Affonso Henriques,
dwindled into debility. It flickered out in Dom Sebastian, who dragged
his country into a mad invasion of Morocco and vanished from human ken
on the disastrous battlefield of Alcazar-Khebir. Then, for sixty years,
not by conquest, but by intrigue, Portugal passed under the sway of
Spain, and lost to the enemies of Spain--that is to say, to England and
Holland--a large part of her colonial empire. At last, in 1640, a
well-planned and daring revolution expelled the Spanish intruders, and
placed on the throne John, Duke of Braganza. As the house of Aviz was
an illegitimate branch of the stock of Affonso Henriques, so the
Braganzas were an illegitimate branch of the House of Aviz, with none
of the Plantagenet blood in them. Only one prince of the line, Pedro
II., can be said to have attained anything like greatness. Another,
Joseph, had the sense to give a free hand to an able, if despotic,
minister, the Marquis of Pombal. But, on the whole, the history of the
Braganza rule was one of steady decadence, until the second half of the
nineteenth century found the country one of the most backward in
Europe.

Nor was there any comfort to be found in the economic aspect of the
case. A country of glorious fertility and ideal climatic conditions,
inhabited by an industrious peasantry, Portugal was nevertheless so
poor that much of its remaining strength was year by year being drained
away by emigration. The public debt was almost as heavy per head of
population as that of England. Taxation was crushing. The barest
necessaries of life were subject to heavy imposts. Protection
protected, not industries, but monopolies and vested interests.

In short, the material condition of the country was as distressing as
its spiritual state to any one with the smallest sense of enlightened
patriotism.

King C