protection of England maintained its separate existence during the eighteenth century. There was some probability of a union with Spain at the beginning of the present century, when, after the conclusion of the Peninsular War against Napoleon, certain statesmen began to point out the anomaly of the Iberian peninsula being divided into two separate kingdoms, but a generation of great historians and poets soon arose, who reminded the people of the days of Portuguese greatness and of the glories of the past, and made it impossible for the modern Portuguese to lose the consciousness of their individuality as a nation. But, though the history of Portugal possesses its peculiar interest as showing how one small portion of the Iberian peninsula maintained a separate existence, it presents also many features of romantic incident, especially during the epoch when it was for a time the leading nation of Europe. The extraordinary vigour shown by the inhabitants of this small corner of Europe during the latter half of the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries is most remarkable. Not only were Portuguese navigators the first to creep down the west coast of Africa in small boats, in which modern sailors would hardly like to cross the English Channel, but they dared to double the Cape of Good Hope, and to sail across the Indian Ocean to India and Ceylon. Thence they ventured round the point of Singapore, and established themselves at Macao, from which centre they explored the coasts of China and Japan. In the other direction, to the west, they crossed the Atlantic and discovered and colonized Brazil. Lisbon became the storehouse and centre of distribution for the products of the East, and attained to a height of wealth and luxury unrivalled since the days of ancient Rome. The history of the Portuguese “conquistadores” in India for the first hundred years after the discovery of the route round the Cape of Good Hope is one long romance; the vastness of their designs, the grandeur of their exploits, and the nobility of character of their great captains, combine to make a story of surpassing interest. And when it is remembered that the soldiers and sailors of these great discoverers and conquerors were inhabitants of the smallest country in Europe, their success seems the more extraordinary, and the interest in the story of the nation which trained the Portuguese heroes becomes the more absorbing. As invariably happens during the heroic age of a nation’s history, literature and the arts flourished at a time distinguished by military and naval prowess, and as Spenser and Shakespeare illustrated the Elizabethan age in England as much as Drake and Raleigh, the age of Vasco da Gama and Alboquerque in Portugal could boast also of Gil Vicente, Sá de Miranda and Camoens. The abrupt fall of Portugal from the greatness and wealth of its heroic period to an insignificant place among the nations is as