JOUllNEY HOME HY LAND. 175 



(iinand and Isabella, when the crowns of Castile and Arra- 

 gon became united on one head, to the very reasonable 

 alarm and distrust of Portugal : ^- and the event justified 

 that countr3^'s prognostications of evil ; for though during 

 the lifetime of those sovereigns no open annexation was 

 attempted, yet their comprehensive scheme for consoli- 

 dating the various kingdoms of the Peninsula was only 

 delayed for a time, and opened the way to its eventual 

 completion under Philip II., when Portugal was added to 

 the broad dominions of Spain. f But though merged in 

 Spain in 1581, no effort was spared throughout the ' sixty 

 years' captivity,' as the period of Castilian usurpation is 

 styled, to free their country from the hated yoke; and 

 under Dom Joao IV. of Braganza, * the restorer,' (the name 

 by which he is honourably known in Portuguese annals,) 

 the Spaniards were driven from the country, and in 1640 

 her independence was recovered. Hence, I think, we have 

 no difficulty in accounting for the bitterness which exists 

 in the breast of every Portuguese against his Spanish 

 neighbour. But this feeling of enmity is mutual and 

 heartily returned. The Spaniard indeed thoroughly de- 

 spises the Portuguese, whom he looks down upon as an 

 inferior order of being, and Childe Harold seems to share 

 in the sentiment, when he says : — 



"Well doth the Spanish hind the difference know 

 'Twixt him and Lusian slave, the lowest of the low. 



But possibly the Childe was a prejudiced enthusiast. 

 Such, however, was not the great Duke of Wellington, 

 perhaps the most practical, truthful, and withal correctly 

 judging witness we could desire: and I have already re- 

 minded my readers what a far higher estimate of the 

 Portuguese, as trusty, reliable soldiers, the Duke enter- 



* Prescott's Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, vol. ii. p. 328. 

 t Ihid., vol. iii. p. 439. 



