(1851), as well as in the more elaborate _O Monasticon_, consisting of two separate parts _Eurico o Presbytero_ (1844) and _O Monge de Cister_ (1848), he wrote romance based upon scrupulous historical research. A slight leaning towards melodrama is as a rule successfully withstood, and his intense and powerful style enchains the attention. _Eurico_ is really a splendid prose poem,[667] in which the eighth-century priest Eurico is Herculano brooding over the degeneracy of Portugal in the nineteenth century. His glowing patriotism unifies the action and raises the style to an impassioned eloquence. The Middle Ages were well suited to him in their mixture of passion and ingenuousness and their scope for violent contrasts of evil and virtue, light and shadow. Most of the _Lendas e Narrativas_ and _O Bobo_ belong to that period, and his _Historia de Portugal_ (4 vols., 1846-53) ends with the year 1279. That he should have stopped there when the character and achievements of King Dinis must have offered him a powerful incentive to proceed shows how deeply he had felt the controversial attacks levelled at his work; but with the Renaissance and the subsequent history of Portugal he was too intensely national to have great sympathy. As a historian he has been compared with Hallam, Thierry, and Niebuhr, and he stands any such comparison well. A passion for truth drove him to the original sources and documents, and, since _alle Gelehrsamkeit ist noch kein Urteil_, he brought the same patience and impartial sincerity to their interpretation. The results obtained he imposed on thousands of readers by his impressive and living style.[668] In his case the style was the man. Beneath coldness or roughness he concealed an affectionate, impetuous nature, a hatred of meanness and injustice. In his personal relations austere and difficult, sometimes no doubt unfair and undiscerning in the severity of his judgements, he was a perfect contrast to Almeida Garrett, compared with whom he was as granite to chalk or as the rock to the stream that flows past it. His strong will was fortunately directed by the Marquesa de Alorna in his youth to the thoroughness of German writers. Thoroughness marked all his work. When the Academy of Sciences entrusted him with the task of collecting documents on the early history of Portugal he threw himself into the labour with a fervour which produced the splendid _Portvgaliae Monvmenta Historica_, a series of historical works and documents of the first importance which began to appear in 1856. From 1867 to 1877 he undertook agriculture not as an amateur’s pastime but as the work of his life, with the result that he achieved another great success scarcely inferior to his success as a writer. The same thoroughness is evident in the Cyclopean fragment of his history and in his shorter writings, the _Opusculos_ (1873-76). His _Da Origem e Estabelecimento da Inquisição em Portugal_ (3 vols., 1854-9), a deeply interesting