and not till then, does the musical science attain perfection; and then poetry begins to decline. Every thing is sung; every thing is composed to be warbled through the eunuch's throat, and sense is sacrificed to sound.

A similar observation may be extended to history. The deeds of the hero are the first object of human curiosity; yet mankind, in almost every country, have ceased to act with dignity, before their actions have been properly recorded. Truth appears cold and insipid to a people inclined to wonder, and wonder is the predominant passion of all uncivilized nations. Fiction is called in to gratify it; and fable is for a time, received as history. But when men come to be more employed about political objects, they become. more desirous of being informed than amazed: they wish to know the real actions of their ancestors, and the causes and the consequences of such actions. The historian takes advantage of this disposition of mind to procure admission to his labours: but as it is more difficult to ascertain facts than to assume them, and easier to assign motives of action, and deduce incidents ingeniously from them, than to trace the motives of men in their actions, and give to truth such a degree of colouring as will make it interest, without rendering its validity suspected, history has every where been later in attaining perfection than the highest works of imagination.

Italy had at last her historians, and excellent ones. Machiavel successfully courted the comic muse, unfolded the principles of a dark and pernicious policy, and digested the annals of his native country with all the discernment of Tacitus; while Guicciardini, a more amiable writer, related the transactions of his own times with the elegance and exactness of Thucidides.

Philosophy was only wanting in the sixteenth century, to bring Italy within the line of comparison with ancient Greece, when Greece was in her glory. A number of independent and free states vied with each other in all the

elegant

She wanted only the

elegant and commercial arts; in wealth and in luxury, in manners and in talents, in pomp and in power. Proud of her privileges, and of her liberal acquisitions, she looked down with contempt upon every other country, and branded every other people with the name of barbarians. Two great monarchs, like those of Persia and Macedon, were contending who should be her master. lights of philosophy to render the parallel complete. Bewildered in the mazes of scholastic reasoning, or lost in the dreams of perverted Platonism, her sages were still alike ignorant of the system of man and of the universe. And before they could know either, it was necessary that the veil of superstition should be rent; that mankind, beholding the puppet to which they had kneeled, and by which they had been over-awed, might fearlessly look through the range of nature, and contemplate its physical and moral

order.

LETTER LVII.

THE PROGRESS OF NAVIGATION, AND PARTICULARLY AMONG THE PORTUGUESE. A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF PORTUGAL. THE DISCOVERIES AND SETTLEMENTS

OF THE PORTUGUESE ON THE COAST OF AFRICA, AND IN THE EAST-INDIES, BY THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY THE SPANIARDS; THE SETTLEMENT OF THE WEST-INDIES, AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO AND PERU, TOGETHER WITH SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE MORAL AND POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THOSE GREAT EVENTS.

FROM the arts that polish nations, my dear Philip, let us turn our eyes more particularly toward those that aggrandize them; which supply the wants of one people with the superfluities of another, and make all things common to all. Such are navigation and commerce. By these, and the arts to which they gave birth, the Phoenicians and Carthaginians crowded with cities their barren shores, and attained the first rank among ancient nations; by these, in

later

later times, the Venetians and Dutch, struggling from dirt and sea-weed, crowned with palaces their lakes and marshes, and became, in different æras, the most opulent and powerful people in Modern Europe; by these Britain now governs the ocean, and gives law to the opposite extremities. of the globe, at the same time that she wafts from pole to pole, the luxuries and the conveniencies of life'.

The navigation of Europe, at the beginning of the fif teenth century, though much improved since the age of Charlemagne, was chiefly confined to the Mediterranean and Baltic seas, and was still little more than what is now called coasting. Flanders was the great theatre of commerce. Thither as I have already had occasion to observe, the Italian states conveyed from the ports of Egypt, the precious commodities of the East; and thither the Hanseatic merchants carried from the shores of the Baltic, the naval stores, and other rude merchandise of the North. To this common mart all European nations resorted. Here they sold or exchanged the produce of their several countries, and supplied themselves with what they wanted, without dreaming of new ports, or suspecting that the system of commerce could be altered. Dantzick, Lisbon, and Alexandria, continued to mark the limits of practical navigation; when the enlightened and enterprising genius of Don Henry of Portugal extended the views of the mariner, and emboldened him to pilot the Atlantic, or Great Western Ocean. But before I speak of that prince, and the discoveries which he accomplished, I must say a few words of his country, which I have hitherto considered only as an appendage of Spain.

Portugal, which forms the western coast of the southern peninsula of Europe, had no existence as a separate state till towards the close of the eleventh century. About that time Alphonso VI. king of Castile and Leon, having conquered from the Moors the northern provinces of the present king

1. This letter was written before the revolt of our American colonics.

dom

dom of Portugal, bestowed them, together with his natural daughter, upon Henry of Burgundy, a noble volunteer, who had assisted him in his wars. Henry took only the title of count; but his son Alphonso, having recovered other provinces from the Moors, resumed the regal dignity in 1139. The kings of Portugal, like those of Spain, long spent their force in combating the Moors, and had no connection with the rest of Europe. A detail of those barbarous wars would be equally void of instruction and amusement. I shall therefore only observe, that the succession continued uninterrupted in the line of Burgundy, till the death of Ferdinand in 1383; when John of Castile, who had married the infanta of Portugal, claimed the crown, as the king had left no male issue. But the states of Portugal, after an A. D. 1385.. interregnum of eighteen months, gave it to John, natural brother of their deceased sovereign, and at that time regent of the kingdom2.

This John, surnamed the Bastard, no less politic than enterprising, proved worthy of his new dignity. He was the first European prince who formed a respectable navy; which he employed, with equal success, in annoying his enemies, and in protecting his subjects. He took Ceuta from the Moors, and over-awed the states of Barbary during his whole reign. He had several sons, who all signalized themselves by their valour and abilities; but more especially the third, Don Henry, whose bold and enlightened genius, assisted by the reports of travellers, led him to project discoveries in the Western Ocean.

A. D. 1414.

This amiable prince, who joined the virtues of a hero and a patriot to the knowledge of a philopher, turned to use that astronomy which the Arabs had preserved. He had a considerable share in the invention of the Astrolabe, and first perceived the advantage that might be drawn from the direction of the magnetic needle to the North; which, though

2. Neufville, Hist. Gen. de Portugal.

already

A. D. 1420.

already known in Europe, had not hitherto been employed with any success in navigation. He established an observatory at Sagres, near Cape St. Vincent, where many persons were instructed in astronomy and the art of sailing. The pilots formed under his eye, not only doubled Cape. Non, long supposed an insurmountable barrier, but advanced as far as Cape Bajadore, and in their return discovered the island of Madeira. Other pilots, yet more bold, were sent out. They doubled Cape Bajadore, Cape Blanco, Cape Verd, and at last Cape Sierra Le ona, within eight degrees of the line, before the A. D. 1463. death of Don Henry. In the course of these voyages, the Azores and Cape de Verd islands had been discovered, and the vine and the sugar-cane introduced into the island of Madeira, and there cultivated with success.

Under the reign of John II. a prince of the most profound sagacity and most extensive views, who first made Lisbon a free port, the Portuguese prosecuted their discoveries with equal ardour and success. The river Zara, on the other side of the line, conducted them to A.D. 1484. the kingdom of Congo, in the interior part of Africa, where they made easy conquests, and established an advantageous commerce. Captain Diaz pasA. D. 1486. sed the extreme point of Africa, to which he gave the name of the Stormy Cape; but the king, who saw more fully the importance of that discovery, styled it the Cape of Good Hope.

A. D. 1497.

Emanuel I. pursued the great projects of his predecessors. He sent out a fleet of four ships, under the command of Vasco de Gama, a noble Portuguese, in order to complete the passage to India by sea. This admiral possessed all the knowledge and talents necessary for such an expedition. After being

A. D. 1498.

assailed by tempests, encircling the eastern coast of Africa, and ranging through unknown seas, he

happily