Blended with the idea of happiness and Gonsalva, the enterprize against Africa, had commenced. Sebastian’s roused spirit once more breathed war and religious enthusiasm: he directed levies to be made, youth trained, foreign powers solicited, and a crusade preached throughout his dominions; he passed himself from province to province, ascertaining its strength and proportioning its supplies to its ability: he stimulated the exertions of his officers, by new distinctions, and solicitously sought to obtain the aid of his uncle Philip II. who then ruled in Spain. This was liberally promised him; shamefully withholden! The prior of Crato, enflamed with the same ardour, and sanctioned by the title of a religious war, accompanied his royal cousin in these progresses, liberally offering his revenues and retainers to aid and support the cause:--he was to make one in the formidable expedition; a circumstance highly agreeable to the King, who loved his enlivening talents, and was accustomed to talk with him of Gonsalva. But the glory of their little army consisted in one gallant stranger, Sir Thomas Stukeley of England.--This brave adventurer had left his native country from the restlessness of a disordered but fine mind, and hearing of Sebastian’s intended attack upon the Moors, came to offer his services at the head of a band of noble Italians. The chivalric romance of Stukeley captivated our youthful hero; he found in him that ardour of enterprize, and those unquenchable hopes, which he had hitherto believed his own peculiar property. While they conversed together, both burned with the same fire; prudential calculations were equally despised by each; danger only, possessed charms for them, and success, unless torn from the arms of destruction, was to them destitute of honour. Stukeley’s reason had once been rudely assaulted by a domestic calamity; and though it still remained uninjured in the eyes of most men, deeper observers beheld a lamentable chasm in his once perfect mind:--an exuberance of imagination had usurped the place of the reasoning faculty; while his heart, true to its nature and to its habits, fed this imagination with visions of exalted but often hazardous virtue. The wild inspiration of his countenance, breathing goodness and greatness, never suggested to Sebastian the idea of an unsettled intellect: what might have appeared feverish ravings in another, were sublimed by the magnificent eloquence of Stukeley into theories of god-like excellence, and heroic exploit.--The young monarch listened to these effusions till their magic transformed impossibilities into certainties: hitherto his character impelled others; now, it was impelled in its turn, and borne with resistless force before the mighty character of Stukeley.