lling; and it must be owned that her
aversion to angling craft did not increase in proportion. As time ran
on, she had encountered all her discarded knights, now singly and now
in companies. A year and a half elapsed, and left the relation
between suitors and maiden as at the beginning. At length a chivalric
and gentle knight, noble in person as in birth, ventured to accost
her, loving and reverently as in her brighter days of yore. Abashed,
overcome with shame, the maiden was at the mercy of the light-winged,
blithe, and watchful god, who seized his hour to enthrone himself
upon her heart. She bought the fairy caps and mantles--she made
honourable satisfaction to the knights, and to him whose generous
constancy had won her heart, she gave a willing and a softened hand.

"Upon her wedding day, the QUIET PEOPLE did not fail to adorn the
festival with their radiant presence; albeit the merry creatures
played a strange cross-game on the occasion. The blissful day over,
and the happy bride and bridegroom withdrawing from the banquet and
the dance, the well-pleased chirping, able little tutor hopped before
them, and led them to the hymeneal bower with floral flute, and
gratulatory song!"

PORTUGAL.[35]

[Footnote 35: _Memoirs of the Marquis of Pombal_. By J. SMITH, Esq.,
Private Secretary to the Marquis of Saldanha. Two vols.]

The connexion of Portugal with England has been continued for so long
a period, and the fortunes of Portugal have risen and fallen so
constantly in the exact degree of her more intimate or more relaxed
alliance with England that a knowledge of her interests, her habits,
and her history, becomes an especial accomplishment of the English
statesman. The two countries have an additional tie, in the
similitude of their early pursuits, their original character for
enterprise, and their mutual services. Portugal, like England, with a
narrow territory, but that territory largely open to the sea, was
maritime from her beginning; like England, her early power was
derived from the discovery of remote countries; like England, she
threw her force into colonization, at an era when all other nations
of Europe were wasting their strength in unnecessary wars; like
England, without desiring to enlarge her territory, she has preserved
her independence; and, so sustain the similitude to its full extent,
like England, she founded an immense colony in the western world,
with which, after severing the link of g