deed, contribute to
that corruption of manners which unnerved the Portuguese, certain it is
the wisdom of legislature might certainly have prevented every evil
which Spain and Portugal have experienced from their acquisitions in the
two Indies.[33] Every evil which they have suffered from their
acquirements arose, as shall be hereafter demonstrated, from their
general ignorance, which rendered them unable to investigate or
apprehend even the first principles of civil and commercial philosophy.
And what other than the total eclipse of their glory could be expected
from a nobility, rude and unlettered as those of Portugal are described
by the author of the Lusiad--a court and nobility who sealed the truth
of all his complaints against them by suffering that great man, the
light of their age, to die in an almshouse! What but the fall of their
state could be expected from barbarians like these! Nor can the annals
of mankind produce one instance of the fall of empire where the
character of the nobles was other than that ascribed to his countrymen
by Camoens.

MICKLE'S SKETCH OF THE HISTORY

OF THE

DISCOVERY OF INDIA.

No lesson can be of greater national importance than the history of the
rise and the fall of a commercial empire. The view of what advantages
were acquired, and of what might have been still added; the means by
which such empire might have been continued, and the errors by which it
was lost, are as particularly conspicuous in the naval and commercial
history of Portugal as if Providence had intended to give a lasting
example to mankind; a chart, where the course of the safe voyage is
pointed out, and where the shelves and rocks, and the seasons of tempest
are discovered and foretold.

The history of Portugal, as a naval and commercial power, begins with
the designs of Prince Henry. But as the enterprises of this great man,
and the completion of his designs are intimately connected with the
state of Portugal, a short view of the progress of the power, and of the
character of that kingdom, will be necessary to elucidate the history of
the revival of commerce, and the subject of the Lusiad.

During the centuries when the effeminated Roman provinces of Europe were
desolated by the irruptions of the northern barbarians, the Saracens
spread the same horrors of brutal conquest over the finest countries of
the eastern world. The northern conquerors of the finer provinces of
Europe embraced the Christia