The era of peaceful parliamentary government, which succeeded the stormy reign of Maria II., has been one of material prosperity for Portugal; agriculture and commerce revived, and a great literary and historical revival took place, marked by the names of João Baptista de Almeida-Garrett, Antonio Feliciano de Castilho, and José da Silva Mendes Leal, the poets, and of Alexandra Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo, the Viscount de Santarem, and Luis Augusto Rebello da Silva, the historians. Men were not wanting in the first half of the nineteenth century to advocate the formation of an Iberian republic or kingdom, comprising the whole of the peninsula, but the revival of national pride in recalling the glorious past of Portuguese history, which has been the work of these great poets and historians, has breathed afresh the spirit of patriotism into a people which had been wearied out by perpetual “pronunciamentos” and absurd civil wars. The only political event of any importance during the reign of Pedro V., who came of age and assumed the government in 1855, and who in 1857 married the Princess Stephanie of Hohenzollern, was the affair of the _Charles et Georges_. This French ship was engaged in what was undoubtedly the slave trade, though slightly disguised, off the coast of Africa in 1858, when it was seized by the Portuguese authorities of Mozambique, and, in accordance with the laws and treaties against the slave trade, the captain, Roussel, was condemned to two years’ imprisonment. The Emperor Napoleon III., glad to have a chance of posing before the French people, and counting on his close alliance with England to prevent the intervention of the ancient ally of Portugal, instantly sent a large fleet to the Tagus under Admiral Lavaud, and demanded compensation, which, as England gave no hint of assistance, Portugal was obliged to pay. The whole country, and especially the city of Lisbon, was during this reign, on account of the neglect of all sanitary precautions, ravaged by cholera and yellow fever, and it was in the midst of one of these outbreaks, on the 11th of November, 1861, that Pedro V., who had refused to leave his pestilence-stricken capital, died of cholera, and was followed to the grave by two of his younger brothers, Dom Ferdinand and Dom John.