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"My very worshipful friends, I cannot but greatly commend your present godly and vertuous intention, in the serious enterprising (for the singular love you beare to your countrey)—a matter which I hope shall prove profitable to the nation, and honourable to this our land. Which intention of yours wee also of the nobilitie are ready to our power to helpe and further; neither do wee holde any thing so deare and precious to us, which wee will not willingly foregoe, and lay out in so commendable a cause.

"You know the man (Chanceller) by report, I by experience-you by wordes, I by deedes-you by speech and company, but I by the daily trials of his life-have a full and perfect knowledge of him; and you are also to remember into how many perils for your sakes, and his countrey's love, he is now to runne; whereof it is requisite that wee be not unmindful, if it please God to send him good successe. We commit a little money to the chaunce and hazard of fortune; he commits his life (a thinge to a man of all things most deare) to the raging sea and the uncertainties of many dangers. We shall here live and rest at home quietly with our friends and acquaintance; but hee in the meane time, labouring to keepe the ignorant and unruly mariners in good order and obedience, with howe many cares shall he trouble and vex himselfe with howe many troubles shall he breake himselfe ? and how many disquietings shall hee bee forced to sustaine? We shall keep our own coastes and countrey; he shall seeke strange and unknowne kingdoms. He shall commit his safetye to barbarous and cruell people, and shall hazard his life among the monstrous and terrible beastes of the sea. Wherefore, in respect of the greatnesse of the dangers, and the excellencie of his charge, you are to favour and love the man thus departing from us; and if it fall so happily out that hee returne againe, it is your part, and duetie also, liberally to reward him."

The aim of this expedition was to force a way round the northern coasts of Asia to Cathay and India, and thus open a direct and unimpeded intercourse between England and those distant realms. It is proposed to give a sketch in some future paper of the most brilliant of these north-eastern and north-western endeavours and achievements. Brilliant enterprises verily they are, for ever memorable in the history of man's battle with and conquest of Nature; but the primal inspiration of their chief promoters, strange as it may seem, was commerce; that is, commerce with those Christian blessings to barbarous and pagan peoples, which it was then understood were bound to travel in its train. But in order to understand this, we must look to the southward: the reason of these northern explorations lay about the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn.

I have already characterized the 15th century as the age in which the European peoples were pressing their boundaries out

wards in every direction. The man whose life, more than that of any other of his time, is the index of this movement, is Prince Henry of Portugal. Born in 1394, he lived through two-thirds of the great 15th century-the century which is as remarkable for effort and aspiration, as the 16th was for the accomplishment of Reformation. He died in 1463, after devoting a long life, with rare singleness of purpose, to maritime exploration; and to him, its sanguine, strenuous, and persevering advocate, against the indolence of rulers, the ignorance of peoples, and the terribly long yarns of perils and horrors which the sailors brought home with them, the glory of its results is due. This great prince served at the capture of Ceuta by the Portuguese in 1415, and thus took part in the first European establishment on the continent of Africa; and there probably he conceived the project of devoting his life to the discovery of the unknown regions beyond. Forsaking politics -no slight self-abnegation in those stirring times-he took up his residence at Terçal Naval, in the Bay of Sagres, just under Cape St. Vincent, the south-west promontory of Spain. Thence he could strain his eyes over the blue Atlantic, and see, among the golden sunset mists, the dim outline of an undiscovered world. We like to picture that sagacious and learned prince settling himself decisively there, on the westmost limit of European dominion, careless of the stormy and bloody drama which Europe was enacting around him, and devoting a long and toilsome life, which might have challenged the first honour in courts and camps, to the task of extending that dominion over regions on which the sun, which set on Sagres, might be pouring his noontide blaze. He, first of all modern men, fully grasped the thought that Westward, ho! is the watchword of the human race.

When he settled at Sagres, Cape Bojador-the Outstretcherwas the southern limit of western discovery; Madeira and the Cape de Verd Islands were unknown. From that time to the day of his death he occupied himself, with brief intervals of political activity, in the work of organizing and sending forth expeditions to extend the knowledge of the tropical regions of Africa, and promote commercial intercourse between the African and European peoples. His motive for dedicating his great life to this single object he himself records. For it seemed to him "that neither mariner nor merchant would be likely to adopt an enterprise in which there was no clear hope of profit. It belonged, then, to great men and princes, and amongst such he knew of no one but himself who was inclined to it."

A prince of a rare sort, then as now! All honour to Adam Smith and the supply-and-demand creed of Free Trade. But there have been ages in which nobler things than interests were

needed to open up even the tracks of trade. The Prince began his discoveries in 1418, but it took his captain fifteen years to round the terrible Bojador. Then one Gil Eannes, in the year 1433, made the passage; but there is good reason to believe that the hardy Normans had been round before him, and even one Sieur de Bethancourt, a French baron, chamberlain of Charles VI.; but these records are very dim. Cape Blanco and Cape Verd were quickly discovered and surveyed, and commercial relations were established with the Negro peoples of those coasts. In the year 1441, Prince Henry obtained from the Pope a grant to Portugal of all lands which might be discovered between Bojador and the Indies, with plenary indulgence for those who should die while engaged in the quest. With this sanction and stimulus the work went bravely on. Before Prince Henry died, in 1463, he had pushed the limit of Portuguese dominion down as far as Sierra Leone.

The capture and employment of negro slaves was among the first direct fruits of these great discoveries. Against this traffic Prince Henry failed to set himself; but it was manifestly no motive to him, whatever it might be to his captains; zeal for discovery, and not love of fame, being the ruling passion of his noble heart. But we must be just to the 15th century; we must not weigh its instincts and judgments on this dark subject in the balance of the 19th. Europe, hardly emerged from serfdom (and the history of the origin of European serfdom will bear looking into, and would startle those to whom the clap-trap of the platform, or the popular lecture, is the chief source of knowledge upon the subject)-Europe, I say, hardly emerged from serfdom, and familiar with suffering in every shape and form for ages, having before its eyes continually the enslavement of Christians by the Moors-a dark, dark chapter of medieval history-and finding something like it in the early histories of the Word of God, had not, and could not be expected to have, that horror of the principles and practices of slavery, which has been ripened in us since the Reformation by the broader sunlight of the Gospel. In the most pious, reflecting, and unselfish minds, the horrors and miseries of the traffic were held to be outweighed by the conversion which was its fruit. Remember what conversion meant in Roman Catholic Europe in the 15th century-the endless felicities and glories which mere baptism into the Catholic Church was believed to carry in its train-and you will see, at any rate, the standing-ground of their ideas. Mr. Helps, who has enriched his masterly history of the Spanish Conquest with most valuable extracts from documents and writers little known before, lifts the veil of this slave traffic, and introduces us, through the description of an eye

witness, into the first Spanish slave mart in that 15th century. It is worth our while to consider thoughtfully the description and reflections of this pious and pitiful spectator of the scene.

"But what heart was that, how hard soever, which was not pierced with sorrow, seeing that company: for some had sunken cheeks, and their faces bathed in tears, looking at each other; others were groaning very dolorously, looking at the heights of the heavens, fixing their eyes upon them, crying out loudly, as if they were asking succour from the Father of nature; others struck their faces with their hands, throwing themselves on the earth; others made their lamentations in songs, according to the customs of their country, which, although we could not understand their language, we saw corresponded well to the height of their sorrow. But now, for the increase of their grief, come those who had the charge of the distribution, and they began to put them apart one from the other, in order to equalize the portions; wherefore it was necessary to part children and parents, husbands and wives, and brethren from each other. Neither in the partition of friends and relations was any law kept, only each fell where the lot took him. Oh, powerful fortune! who goest hither and thither with thy wheels, compassing the things of the world as it pleaseth thee, if thou canst place before the eyes of this miserable nation some knowledge of the things that are to come after them, that they may receive some consolation in the midst of their great sadness! And you others who have the business of this partition, look with pity on such great misery, and consider how can those be parted whom you cannot disunite! Who will be able to make this partition without great difficulty? For while they were placing in one part the children that saw their parents in another, the children sprang up perseveringly and fled to them; the mothers enclosed their children in their arms, and threw themselves with them on the ground, receiving wounds with little pity for their own flesh, so that their offspring might not be torn from them! And so, with labour and difficulty, they concluded the partition; for, besides the trouble they had with the captives, the plain was full of people, as well of the place as of the villages and neighbourhood around, who in that day gave rest to their hands, the mainstay of their livelihood, only to see this novelty. And as they looked upon these things, some deploring, some reasoning upon them, they made such a riotous noise, as greatly to disturb those who had the management of this distribution. The Infanta was there upon a powerful horse, accompanied by his people, looking out his share, but as a man who for his part did not care for gain; for, the forty-six souls which fell to his fifth, he speedily made his choice, as all his principal riches were in his contentment, considering with great delight the salvation of those souls which before were lost. And certainly his thought was not vain; for, as soon as they had knowledge of our language, they readily became Christians; and I, who have made this history in this volume, have seen in the town of Lagos young men and young women, the sons and grandsons

of those very captives, born in this land, as good and as true Christians as if they had lineally descended, since the commencement of the law of Christ, from those who were first baptized."

Prince Henry died in 1463. The same author, who has thrown much light on his history, gives an outline of his character, sketched by an able hand :

"He had a grandeur of nature," says Yaria y Sousa, "proportionate to the greatness of his doings; he was bulky and strong; his complexion red and white; his hair coarse, and almost hirsute; his aspect produced fear in those who were not accustomed to him; not to those who were; for even in the strongest current of his vexation at anything, his courtesy always prevailed over his anger; he had a grave serenity in his movements, a notable constancy and circumspection in his words, modesty in all that related to his state and personal observance, within the limits of his high fortune; he was patient in labour, bold and valorous in war, versed in arts and letters, a skilful fencer, in the mathematics superior to all men of his time, generous in the extreme, zealous in the extreme for the increase of the Faith. No bad habit was known in him. He did not marry, nor was it known that he ever violated the purity of continency. His memory was equal to the authority he bore, and his prudence equal to his memory."

He was one of the great ones of the world. Like Columbus, the devotee of a great idea-an idea which God had shown to him-and able to hold all which this earth could offer to him as dross compared with the joy of fulfilling the Divine behests. Of such stuff are the heroes, the leaders of generations, made. For us he is not the less interesting, in that he was the son of Blanche of Lancaster, daughter of great John of Gaunt, nephew therefore to our Henry IV., and cousin-german to our Henry V.-himself an adventurous, heroic man, who might, had he lived, have given a new shape to history. Norse blood was in the veins of this great Prince Henry. He was half Englishman, who opened the chapter of maritime discovery in the modern history of the world. After his death the work went on, but less nobly-it missed his royal head and hand. Still he had broken the neck of the difficulty; he had surveyed the field-it remained but to master the empire which he had laid open to the enterprise of Europe. 1487 Bartholomew Diaz doubled the Cape of Good Hope. "Capo Tormentoso," poor Diaz and his battered sailors called it; but the king on his return gave it a name of better omen, which it bears to this day. The problem of a passage by sea to India was now more than half solved. Ten years afterwards, in 1497, Vasco de Gama sailed on his famous voyage, and succeeded in reaching Calicut, on the coast of Hindostan. He thus completed the effort

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