PORTUGAL. 



125 



Portugal. r ; ve( ] f rom tne Lntin, which indeed at one period wa* 

 ^^Y"^ tin- laiigu.v..'c of tin- whole I'l-niiiMila, l>ut it i 



| )(>.- -il ..f niaiiv (ireek and Arabic words; and i." 

 southern pi-". i.iy It- found of tl 



dialect <>!' tin- .Moors. A* tin- IM\ a! li:u- of Portugal 

 MM of r'rrncli origin, then .-,- !>e MI] . 



admixture of various trn> of tin- l.m-.m VM- of r'l 

 It is .. j^ravi', solemn, ami melodious .-.pv.-cli : the u-c of 

 row .lominant. and it is |io--r->ed of ;io guttural 



sounds ; but when a tongue, like the Portuguese, is 

 compo-v.l oi' a v.iricty <>f dialivt*, intr.r.hiced at diiTi-r- 

 ent periods, and hearing liitlc or no resemblance to 

 each other, a wide diilc-renee of style may be expected 



obtain between the writtrs of the different . 

 This is the cvi-e in a riMiiark.-ihlc decree, and eoii<ti- 

 tutes one of the greatest difficulties in obtaining a 

 knowledge of tin? laii^ii.ue ; philology is li:ile stu- 

 died, a. id no cultivated nation of L'.mope has produced 

 fewer or more d. Yective lexicons than Portugal. 

 ture. But the Portuguese language, whatever be its de- 

 fects or its beauties, has not been rendered venerable 

 or classical by many works of genius. Literature in 

 Portugal has never indeed been carried to any great 

 eminence ; and even though of late efforts have been 

 made to remove that deplorable ignorance in which the 

 nation has been so long sunk, it is yet decidedly infe- 

 rior to most of the countries of Europe. Yet it has not 

 been entirely barren in men of talents and genius. It 

 lias produced many historians of extensive celebrity ; 

 Joao de Barros, Diogo deCouto, Fr. Bernardo de Brito, 

 and others. In poetry it can boast of Camoens, a name 

 that would throw a lustre over any country : of Diogo 

 Bernardes, Bacelar, Pereria. It has also produced seve- 

 ral dramatic writers; a few mathematicians of eminence ; 

 and the department of natural philosophy is now be- 

 ginning to be assiduously cultivated. But notwith- 

 standing those names, literature and intelligence arc 

 not diffused among the great body of the people. Though 

 the university of Coimbra,* which has always been a 

 celebrated seminary, was founded so early as the four- 

 teenth century, and though other colleges were insti- 

 tuted, which have been suppressed during the last cen- 

 tury, yet the community were always ignorant and un- 

 educated; newspapers and literary journals, those great 

 vehicles of information and knowledge, are even at this 

 day little known ; and schools for the general instruc- 

 tion of the people have not yet been established to the 

 extent necessary. Thirty thousand, it has been com- 

 puted, are the number at present attending the various 

 schools and seminaries in the kingdom. It has now, 

 however, been ascertained that in every well-educated 

 country one-ninth or one-tenth of the whole popula- 

 tion should be receiving education at one time ; and as 

 the population of Portugal amounts to 3,600,000, and as 

 30,000 only are undergoing instruction, consequently 

 no fewer than eleven- twelfths of the people are totally 

 deprived of the means of education. The late revolu- 

 tion, and the various political events of the last fifteen 

 years, have 1 ad a very favourable effect on literature 

 and education : the Lancasterian system has been intro- 

 duced, and v ; y generally adopted, with great success ; 

 the number of new publications has increased ; liter- 

 ary societies have become more spirited and ambitious ; 



nd newspapers and periodical work? have become more P-n-ri. 

 ; are beginning to circulate widely umo . -^ -^^.^S 

 the body of il <-cdom of the nres i not 



yet f.tabii-htd ; but the censorship of it ho been 

 M from the clergy, and is now entrusted to a com- 

 mittee of the privy council. This is an important 



usxion i allowed in the va- 

 rious departments of literature and science; politics 

 and theology being the only subject! on which retric- 

 :tre imposed. 



But Portugal, though for the last three centuries gh- 

 has not been remark ible for intellectual emint- nee, v. * 



during the century previous to this time, probably the 

 I distinguished nation in Europe in o e department 

 of science, and in the branches subservient to it. In 

 the annals of navigation and discovery, Portugal 

 always occupy a bright pige, and it will even be re- 

 corded to her honour, that -he had the merit of remov- 

 ing one of the most formidable barriers by which Eu- 

 ropeans had been so long shut out from a knowle 

 <>i a most important portion of the globe. Portugi. 

 scholars at this period studied with assiduity, geome- 

 try, astronomy, and geography, the sciences on which 

 navigation is founded; and, under tlie patronage of 

 Henry, Duke of Viseo (a prince who cultivated the art* 

 and sciences, then unknown, or despised by per^-ons of 

 his rank) and of various members of the rqyal family, 

 they discovered not only the Madeira Islands, the Cape 

 Verd Islands, and the Azores, and explored the w 

 tern coast of Africa, but opened a way to the 'East by 

 the Cape of Good Hope, and discovered Brazil, in South 

 America, which last two events, so honourable to the 

 Portuguese character, and so important in the history 

 of the world, took place within seven years after the 

 discovery of America by the illustrious Columbus. A 

 farther account of the naval achievements of the Por- 

 tuguese will be given in a subsequent part of this ar- 

 ticle ; and it need only be mentioned at present, that if 

 to the enterprise of her own subjects in the pursuit of 

 discovery, Portugal had added that of Columbus, who 

 applied to her for protection and patronage, she would 

 have earned to herself, in the department which we 

 are considering, a glory and a distinction to which no 

 other nation in the world could produce a parallel. 



The religion of Portugal is the Roman Catholic, i;~; ^ion. 

 maintained to a degree of rigour and superstition else- 

 where unknown. Protestants, however, though not 

 tolerated by law, are connived at; liberty of conscience 

 is virtually allowed ; nor are even the Jews molested, 

 unless they are peculiarly obtrusive and troubleso 

 The inquisition, which effectually checks a spirit of li- 

 beral inquiry and literary improvement, was established 

 before the middle of the sixteenth century, and conti- 

 nued in great activity till lately, when by some regu- 

 lation it was abolished. The number of the clergy is 

 usually great ; the parishes amounting to 4271, the 

 number of parish priests must be equally great ; wi. 

 in Scotland, a country of nearly the same extent, ti. 

 are not one-fourth of that number. The Portuguese 

 priests, though not remarkable for vice and immor- 

 ality, are ignorant and poor, the wealth of the chur 

 being appropriated by the prelates and collective i^t-i- 

 blishments. The number of monasteries is -ilT, ci 



I 



* George Buchanan, our illustrious countryman, it may not be improper to state, was in 1.517, on the invitation of the King of Portu- 

 gal, appointed a professor in the college of C^inibra. In this situation he continued till 1511), when, h.iving offe-ulril the religious preju- 

 dices and bigotry of the nation, he was committed to prison, whence, at the end of eighteen months, he w.-.- ":i!y to be sent to a 

 monastery. It was while in this latter confinement he began and effected his great work, a Latin version of the I'suhns, which in purity 

 rivals the composition of the Augustan age. 



