During the reigns of Sancho I., Affonso II., Sancho II., and Affonso III., Portugal attained its European limits, and started on the way to become a great, free, and wealthy nation. The period of war and of territorial extension in the peninsula was now over, and the period of civilization was to dawn. Territorially and constitutionally, Portugal was now an established kingdom; it remained for it to become civilized and thoroughly homogeneous before the great heroic period of exploration and Asiatic conquest should begin. The kingdom and its people had passed through the stage of childhood; now was to come its stirring youth, in which the great qualities of the Portuguese were to be trained and developed, before the period of glorious manhood was to mark the height of its greatness. [Illustration: text decoration] [Illustration: text decoration] V. THE CONSOLIDATION OF PORTUGAL. No better ruler than Diniz, or Denis, could be found for a country which, after centuries of war, needed to have a period of peace and quiet. He was a poet, and loved literature; he was a great administrator, and loved justice; he was a statesman, and avoided foreign wars; he was a far-seeing man, and prepared for the extension of Portuguese energies beyond the sea by encouraging commerce; and, above all, he saw the need of agriculture and of the arts of peace to take the place of incessant wars, and in every respect he nobly earned the sobriquet of the “Ré Lavrador,” or “Denis the Labourer.” From all these points of view his reign is of vast importance in the history of Portugal, for it marks the development of the people into an independent nation, but, like all peaceful reigns of quiet progress, it is not signalized by many striking events.