Bernardo de Brito, a Portuguese historian, who lived in the latter end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, possessed a far higher degree of historical cultivation. He was educated at Rome, and was master of several modern languages. He devoted himself to the ecclesiastical profession, but in the cloister he followed his predilection for Portuguese history; and as authorized Cronista of his convent, he undertook the arduous task of writing a complete history of the Portuguese monarchy. He died in the year 1617, in the forty-seventh year of his age, without having attained the object to which he honourably aspired. But, notwithstanding his early death, he might have succeeded in completing the history of his native country, had not the plan on which he proceeded placed that object beyond his reach. The idea of a history of the Portuguese monarchy, would have been properly fulfilled by commencing with the foundation of that monarchy, and in an introduction only, referring back somewhat beyond the eleventh century. But Bernardo de Brito contemplated the execution of a work of much greater magnitude. His _Monarchia Lusitana_ was intended to be a complete history of the country, now called Portugal, from the most remote antiquity down to the latest period.[251] The ancient history of Portugal was with him a favourite part of his subject. It is probable that he wished his history to rank as a companion to the Spanish work of Florian de Ocampo, who in the reign of Charles V. commenced on a similar plan, a history of the Spanish monarchy from the time of the flood.[252] Brito, however, did not think that period sufficiently remote, but chose to start from the creation of the world. Whatever particulars are furnished by ancient authors, concerning Lusitania and the Lusitanians of the earliest ages, he has collected, examined, and arranged in historical connection. But a thick folio volume, which includes the four first books, brings the history no further than the birth of Christ; and towards the end of the second volume, where the history of modern Portugal commences, the work breaks off. Had it been completed, still it would not have been an easy matter to have brought the numerous notices respecting Portuguese antiquities, which Brito has introduced, under a point of view whereby they might have formed an appropriate union with the heterogeneous events of modern history. But the work is eminently distinguished for style and descriptive talent. The ingenious author seems like many other eminent persons of his age to have derived particular advantage from his residence in Italy. Without deteriorating by laborious polish, the vigorous style which is indispensable to historical composition, he gives even dry narratives of facts in a manner totally different from the compilers of the old chronicles; and where the internal interest of the subject animates the description, Brito’s historical pictures