Let me pass lightly over the period in which the King of Portugal and his Aziek journeyed from Ispahan to Cairo. They embarked there in a vessel bound for Venice; sojourned at Venice only till they procured a passage in a ship going to India; the captain of which engaged to stop at Massignan, where Brazil-traders usually watered, and where he might then transfer his passengers according to their wishes. As the Venetian bark sailed between the shores of Spain and of Africa, and leaving the smiling waves of the Mediterranean, entered upon the stern Atlantic, emotions of awe, of apprehension, of gratitude, springing from the memory of former days, grew upon the hearts of Sebastian and Kara Aziek. After so many vicissitudes, so many anxieties, they were united inseparably; “The world was all before them where to chuse “Their place of rest; and Providence their guide!” Buried in profound thought, they sat together with their eyes fixed on the two coasts that recalled such various remembrances. Kara Aziek gazed on Africa, thinking of her father and Abensallah: Sebastian regarded the Spanish shore, gradually turning his reflections from remote events to such as had been lately detailed to him at Venice.--He had learned there several important facts, upon which he now ruminated in serious silence. Since his departure from Portugal, and after sojourning in Persia, much change had taken place. Cardinal Henry was dead, the succession to his throne had been hotly contested by a croud of pretenders: Don Antonio was proclaimed by one party, Philip II. by another; the streets of Lisbon had been filled with assassination and tumults; her prisons alternately thronged with the adherents of the Braganzas and the d’Aveyros. Finally Spain prevailed: Antonio had escaped with difficulty beyond sea, thrown himself on the protection of England, embarked in a vain expedition, lost all hope again, and was now wandering through France, mocking poverty with the title of King, which his rank and vicious conduct rendered but a seal of infamy. Seated on his throne of Spain, Philip made the neck of Portugal his footstool: she felt her new sovereign only by the weight of his tyranny: her nobles were torn from her, her court filled with the greedy followers of a Castilian Regent; her treasures were wafted into Spanish ports, and her halls of justice transported to the capital of her oppressor.--Crushed with accumulating burthens, her people lost their strength to resist; and terrified by the bloody vengeance which Philip took on them for yielding to the delusion of two impostors who had successively started up proclaiming themselves Don Sebastian, they thought no more of their rights; they crouched under his iron sceptre, appearing to believe themselves fortunate if but permitted to breathe.