the chronicles of various realms should be read to the students and the marvels of the world (_Mirabilia Mundi_); see _Sprengel_, p. 221, and Wharton, _History of English Poetry_, i, p. 92. In the period at which the statutes we mention were given to (New) College in Oxford, the relations between Portugal and England were knit more closely than in preceding centuries. The Court of the King, D. John I, adopted most of the English usages, and the literary communication between the two peoples was more extensive than in earlier time. The citation of the romances of chivalry made by the King to his knights, the adoption of the French language (which was then that of the Court of England), the devices and mottoes of which the Infants made use, prove the existence of that influence. Besides this, divers passages of King D. Duarte's _Leal Conselheiro_ show that the Infants of the House of Aviz (often) discussed various literary matters with the King, their father, and other literary persons, and that they even debated about the rules and regulations for properly translating classical works. We have also noticed that King D. John I, in the discourse which he made to the fidalgos who remained at Ceuta in 1415, cited the _De Regimine Principum_ of Fr. Gil de Roma, bidding them recall to memory how they had often read the same in his Privy Chamber. So then, at that epoch of discoveries, in which the greatest enthusiasm prevailed for the prosecution of enterprises of such moment, the reading of the _Marvels of the World_, and of the _Travels of Marco Polo_, which the Infant D. Pedro brought from Venice, formed beyond doubt the delight of all those famous men, courtiers of the Infant D. Henry, of his illustrious father, and of his brothers--courtiers, moreover, who received their education in the royal or princely palaces. The passages, then, which we read in this Chronicle, and which we indicate to the reader, in spite of their brevity, and of the defects which the critical study of our own time enables us to note--these passages, we say, are of the highest importance when they are studied in harmony with other contemporary documents. The great men of the fifteenth century, formed in the school of the Infant Don Henry, were unquestionably possessed of great erudition for those times--an erudition and knowledge which at first eludes observation, through being muffled up in the rudeness of a language without polish, and which was more energetic in action than explicit and agreeable in writing, but it is nevertheless clear that they knew all that was known in their age.