vain, and though he cannot justly claim a place near that historian, yet are his labours well deserving of an ample notice in the history of Portuguese literature. The celebrated work of Joaõ de Barros is entitled “Asia, or the Atchievements which the Portuguese performed in the Discovery and Conquest of the Seas and Lands of the Orient.[241]” The books are, like those of Livy’s works, distributed into decades. These decades are four in number, and each makes a moderately sized folio volume. In this work Barros, though he embraces only the most brilliant portion of Portuguese history, has pursued an idea similar to that which governed Livy, for he constantly endeavours to illustrate and render self-evident the greatness of the Portuguese name, as Livy does the majesty of the Roman people. Whether national pride may not sometimes have seduced him into violations of historical truth, is a question which the historian of eloquence cannot be required to investigate.[242] This Portuguese Livy has to a certain degree approached the excellence of his model in the art of historical description. His language is sometimes not merely elegant; but the pictures he draws exhibit an unaffected charm of intuitive representation. These descriptions are neither disfigured by pompous phrases nor poetic excrescences; and they still possess a lively internal spirit as well when rural or urbane scenery is depicted,[243] as when military events are represented.[244] But passages thus distinguished for rhetorical beauty are only occasionally to be found in the works of Barros. His narrative style is, upon the whole, merely the old chronicle style, with the diction somewhat more elevated; and even his diction abounds in expressions which were beginning to grow antiquated at the period when he wrote. The practice of commencing several sentences in succession by the conjunction _and_, in the manner of the old chronicles, is not uncommon in the writings of Barros. But he seldom attains the real flexibility of the long, yet harmoniously articulated sentences of Livy. Barros sometimes very happily inculcates his practical views by speeches in the manner of the ancients, which under certain circumstances he introduces as delivered by the Public, in order to express in the most natural way all that can be said for and against certain enterprises; such, for example, as the continual fitting out, under the auspices of Prince Henry, so celebrated in the history of discoveries of vessels, for the further exploring of the new passage to India.[245] Speeches by individuals, though seldom, are for the most part not inappropriately introduced; but the insipid style of the chronicles is then very unseasonably retained.[246] Least of all did Barros understand the drawing of character; and in this respect the difference between the Roman and the Portuguese Livy is most striking. The monkish point of view in which this author, like every other of