“ For a half-century art has done almost nothing for the natural river highways; and the Douro, the Guadiana, and the Tagus flow through this kingdom like the wandering rivulets of great English parks. The large towns of the interior, Coimbra, Santarem, Evora, and Miranda, look like pretty kiosks rising about flowering thickets; peaceful retreats, solitudes animated with a life that jogs quietly along and does not go with leaps and bounds as in France, where a satisfied humanity stands still, instead of rushing into the unknown risks of the future. ”

“ By the irony, or perhaps the eternal justice of fate, all the chicanery of Ferdinand, all the wisdom, the labours, and the fervour of Isabella brought disaster, ruin, and death to Spain. A thousand times happier would it have been for Castile to have remained isolated in its corner of Europe, untroubled with the complications of vast European connections, rather than to have been dragged by Aragon into a position of responsibility and world-wide ambition for which neither its native resources nor the extent nor character of its population befitted it. ”

“ No clouds dimmed the aurora of Portuguese liberty. Who can divine the thoughts which assailed the conspirators at waking upon this cold winter morning to undertake this hazardous enterprise? Hiding her scalding tears behind a smile, Donna Filippa de Vilhena herself girded on the swords of her two sons, commanding them not to think upon her fate, but upon the fate of Portugal; declaring that to die for one’s country when she lay groaning under oppression was still more beautiful than to live for one’s mother. ”

“ And for the Englishman’s hardiness and enterprise, bear witness the passage of the Douro at Oporto, the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo, the storming of Badajoz, the surprise of the forts at Mirabete, the march to Vitoria, the passage of the Bidassoa, the victory of the Nivelle, the passage of the Adour below Bayonne, the fight of Orthez, the crowning battle of Toulouse! To say that he committed faults is only to say that he made war; to deny him the qualities of a great commander is to rail against the clear midday sun for want of light. ”

“ The Portuguese flag fluttered over the most remote countries of the wealthy East. Her commerce sucked fabulous wealth from the abundant breasts of old Asia. India resigned herself to the conquest; Brazil was beginning to be peopled; China and Japan discovered, Oceania subjected, Abyssinia explored, were rich harvests of glory and gold, of heroic deeds and vast fortunes for Portugal. But this gold scarcely circulated in the country; instead of benefiting the latter, it went to enrich England, to give power to Italy and Flanders, stupidly to fill the ever insatiable coffers of the Vatican. ”

“ But, with all our sympathy for the conquerors, it is impossible without a deep feeling of regret to contemplate the decay and final extinction of a race who had made such high advances in civilisation as the Spanish Arabs; to see them driven from the stately palaces reared by their own hands, wandering as exiles over the lands which still blossomed with the fruits of their industry, and wasting away under persecution, until their very name as a nation was blotted out from the map of history. ”

“ It is hard, however, to believe that a monstrosity whom even his contemporaries found worthy of the fame of the most cruel of the cruel, could have been moved by any altruistic care for his people, or any motive except ferocious hatred of any resistance to his unutterable selfishness.
It is difficult to find in history a monarch whose reign had not some effort for good, since perfection in vice is as impossible as perfection in virtue. But surely no other king ever deserved less sympathy than Pedro for his failure to check the noblemen in their greed. ”

“ The assassin of Portugal was that fanatic and imbecile monarch who opened his foolish arms to the Society of Jesus, who planted deep in the kingdom that deadly tree known as absolutism, under whose protecting shadow was planted, thrived, and flowered that colossal infamy—the Inquisition. ”

“ Fertilised by the ashes of the martyrs of the Gospel and the Koran, turned and furrowed by the steel of combatants and the whirl of battles, the land of Portugal received from the hands of Sancho the seeds of greatness and royal strength in the councils which were everywhere established; in the farms and villages which were founded in the districts least subject to invasion and incursions; and in the frontier castles which were crowned with bastions and provided with military stores. In those days the courage which faces death was but a trivial virtue. ”

“ What man of genius would resolve on a career of self-denial only to be calumniated and persecuted as was Prince Henry, to achieve a miserable end like Admiral Pacheo, or like Camoens; or to languish forgotten, like the painter Glama, reduced to making tavern signs; like the sculptor Machado de Castro and the founder Costa, creators of an equestrian statue of José I, worthy of ranking with the greatest art works of the eighteenth century? ”

“ If the Portuguese had so much reason to complain of the government of the second Philip, that of his son and successor was, doubtless, still more onerous, more insulting: a good one, like that of Philip I, would have been hated; a bad one would naturally add to the existing mass of discontent. That the weak, the profligate, and the unprincipled count-duke de Olivares could direct the affairs of this kingdom with advantage, either to it or to his royal master, will not be expected by anyone who has perused the account of his administration in Spain. ”

“ Had the emperor continued to live and reign, he would have found himself likewise engaged in mortal combat with that great religious movement in the Netherlands, which he would not have been able many years longer to suppress, and which he left as a legacy of blood and fire to his successor. Born in the same year with his century, Charles was a decrepit, exhausted man at fifty-five, while that glorious age, in which humanity was to burst forever the cerements in which it had so long been buried, was but awakening to a consciousness of its strength. ”

“ Thus fell the great constable of Castile, the victim, chiefly, of his own immeasurable ambition, and in no mean degree of courtier jealousy and of royal faithlessness. If his crimes were many, they were characteristic rather of the age than of the man: he was certainly no more criminal than the great body of the Castilian barons, who despised alike justice and reason when violence could secure their ends. To him the queen was indebted for her crown; yet she persecuted him with unrelenting hatred. The numbers whom he had enriched forsook him as his favour declined ”

“ He manifested a succession of emotions at the course of contemporary affairs, as intense and as varied as if the world still rested in his palm. He was, in truth, essentially a man of action. He had neither the taste nor talents which make a man great in retirement. Not a lofty thought, not a generous sentiment, not a profound or acute suggestion in his retreat has been recorded from his lips. ”

“ There was still that dream of uniting Spain to Portugal, but when the proposition was made to Pedro V, he replied: “They think to flatter my ambition and believe that I shall favour them; they are mistaken. Besides the reasons of propriety, policy, and honour which should restrain me, there are considerations which I must not forget—yes, I—if others do forget them. They do not reflect that if the house of Braganza mounts the throne of the peninsula, Portugal would be nothing but a Spanish province, and that our nationality would be absorbed. ”

“ So great was the singular confidence which the king placed in the constable, and so excessive the latter’s power, that it would be difficult to find a king or prince, however feared and obeyed, more powerful in his kingdom than was the constable in Castile, or who enjoyed greater freedom in the government and administration. Not only the offices, positions, and grants, of which the king had the disposal, were in his hands, but also the ecclesiastical dignities and benefices; no man in the kingdom was bold enough to petition the pope or recognise his orders save with the constable’s consent. ”

“ ESTIMATE BY CHERBULIEZ OF GENERAL PRIM
There are in every country men who accomplish their ends by romantic adventures, and this is more common in Spain than anywhere else. There it is an ancestral or fictitious adventurer, who has really no other god but his own interests, but succeeds by his audacities and a kind of native generosity in giving an air of grandeur to his exploits, a varnish of glory and poetry to his cupidity. So the favourite Spanish hero, the famous Cid Campeador, appears to us when criticism has rolled away the luminous clouds with which pure legend has surrounded him. ”

“ Who has not heard of the famous and everlasting oak of Guernica, under whose shade they held their patriarchal assemblies or calzaras and which in bygone days inspired Rousseau in the Contrât Social to utter these memorable and oft-quoted words: “When we see the happiest people in the world regulating their affairs of state by a body of peasants under an oak, and always conducting themselves wisely, what is to prevent one scorning the refinements of other nations which make themselves famous and miserable with so much art and mystery?” ”

“ The efforts of Ferdinand to curb the violence of the aristocracy, his prudent economy, his firm sway, and the aversion of many Castilians to the sole domination of an Aragonese, had created many enemies. More hoped that, under a weak and lenient prince like Philip, their love of power and their avarice would be equally gratified. Hence, it is no wonder that an opposition, at once systematic and violent, was formed to the pretensions of Ferdinand—an opposition too loud to permit the soft whisper of policy or gratitude to be heard. ”

“ The possession of Badajoz had become a point of personal honour with the soldiers of each nation, but the desire for glory with the British was dashed by a hatred of the citizens on an old grudge; and recent toil and hardship with much spilling of blood had made many incredibly savage; for these things render the noble-minded indeed averse to cruelty but harden the vulgar spirit: numbers also, like Cæsar’s centurion, who could not forget the plunder of Avaricum, were heated with the recollection of Ciudad Rodrigo and thirsted for spoil. ”

“ It was among these sandalled republicans in hides and blue berets, indefatigable walkers and great players of peloto, that Carlism recruited its ranks as well as in Navarre and a part of Catalonia. The mountain regions in general were in the hands of the clergy and the pretender. They furnished them brave, sober, robust soldiers, nimble as smugglers, knowing all the secret passes and defiles, skilful at making off after a defeat and dispersing so as to rally elsewhere, possessing in fact all the necessary qualities for this species of tricky and partisan war in which Spain has always excelled. ”

“ This national affection went so far as to attribute to Alfonso Henriques the halo of the saints, and urge that Rome should bestow upon the fierce conqueror that crown which belongs to the martyr’s resignation. But if a creed of peace and humility forbade Rome to grant that crown, another religion likewise venerable, the religion of patriotism, teaches us that when we pass the pale, worm-eaten portal of the church of Santa Cruz we are about to pay homage to the ashes of that man but for whom the Portuguese nation, and perhaps even the name of Portugal, would not be in existence to-day. ”

“ From the seventh century to the capture of Lisbon in 1147 Moorish architecture had its compromising effect on the elegant majesty of the great lines and arches of the Saracens’ predecessors; the baths of Cintra, the wall and seventy-seven towers of Lisbon, the fortifications and palaces of Evora, and many mosques since transformed into churches, signified, towards the close of the twelfth century, the degree of Islam’s foothold on Portuguese soil—an unsteady tenure, without consistence, without depth, bearing witness to the rapidity of conquest as well as to the fear of ephemeral possession. ”

“ Ferdinand is without doubt the greatest hero of the Spanish nation; to his military genius, manifested in many great expeditions which he brought to a successful termination, he united two qualities rarely combined—a prudent policy and an acute sense of justice, which caused him to be loved and respected by all the kings of Spain and even by his enemies. It was through the fame of his rectitude that Murcia submitted to him without warfare, and that from an enemy the king of Granada became his loyal and submissive vassal. ”

“ Things inadmissible to our present civilisation were not so to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—above all when the deed was that of an absolute king who had to render an account to God alone.
There is no doubt that the wealth and therefore the influence successively acquired by the nobility had reached such a pitch that they absorbed the best revenues of the land, vexing the people by the insolence, cupidity, and abuses which oppressed the vassals of the great lords and proprietors, though Portugal happily never suffered the terrors of feudalism. ”

“ Moreover, Madrid had within her a crowd of partisans of absolutist principles—all those who belonged to the palace or the clergy, all those whom a liberal administration had deprived of employment, and the relations of refugees. These warmly welcomed him who was conqueror over a constitutional system. But the duke of Angoulême, although received with open arms, with acclamation, song, and dance, could hardly mistake the general feeling. For while the absolutists thronged the streets, the middle class, who alone desired and upheld liberty, hid their humiliation by their firesides. ”

“ In this unusual tangle of politics the cry of “Portugal for the Portuguese!” began to grow. The only man who could be said to approach popularity was General Gomes Freire de Andrade, who had served under Napoleon throughout the wars, and whose deep hatred of the English had found new fuel, seeing his country and his fellow-soldiers so rigorously governed by the foreigner who had come with promises of freedom. He conspired with others for a rising, but his plans were exposed and he and ten comrades put to death by the regency. ”