Page:The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India.djvu/38

 than the total eclipse of their glory could be expected from a nobility, rude and unlettered as those of Portugal are described by the author of the Lusiad, a court and nobility, who sealed the truth of all his complaints against them, by suffering that great man, the light of their age, to die in an alms-house! What but the fall of their state could be expected from barbarians like these! Nor can the annals of mankind produce one instance of the fall of empire, where the character of the grandees was other than that ascribed to his countrymen by Camoens.

No lesson can be of greater national importance than the history of the rise and the fall of a commercial empire. The view of what advantages were acquired, and of what might have been still added; the means by which such empire might have been continued, and the errors by which it was lost, are as particularly conspicuous in the naval and commercial history of Portugal, as if Providence had intended to give a lasting example to mankind; a chart, where the course of the safe voyage is pointed out, and where the shelves and rocks, and the seasons of tempest are discovered, and foretold.

The history of Portugal, as a naval and commercial power, begins with the designs of Prince Henry. But as the enterprises of this great man, and the completion of his designs are intimately connected with the state of Portugal, a short view of the progress of the power, and of the character of that kingdom, will be necessary to elucidate the history of the revival of commerce, and the subject of the Lusiad.

During the centuries, when the effeminated Roman provinces of Europe were desolated by the irruptions of northern or Scythian barbarians, the Saracens, originally a wandering banditti of Asiatic Scythia, spread the same horrors of brutal conquest over the finest countries of the eastern world. The northern conquerors of the finer provinces of Europe embraced the Christian religion as professed by the monks, and, contented with the luxuries of their new settlements, their military spirit soon declined. Their ancient brothers, the Saracens, on the other hand, having embraced the religion of Mohammed, their rage for war received every addition which may possibly be inspired by religious enthusiasm. Not only the spoils of the vanquished, but their beloved Paradise itself was to be obtained by their