The African asks anxiously whether the religion of the Christians had already been revealed in the time of Alphonso. His venerable friend replies that it had, and that Alphonso, by his great piety displayed in the building of monasteries and in the slaughter of Moors,—for he did not spare even the tender infants,—averted from himself some of the effects of the curse. But though he obtained the crown of Portugal and was permitted to triumph over the infidels, yet it was remarked that his life was disturbed and unhappy, and that he met with strange disasters in the midst of his successes. The curse seemed to deepen with time. His grandson, the second Alphonso, set aside his father's will, and seized on the inheritance of his sisters; a third Alphonso, son to this second one, deprived his elder brother of his throne; the fourth Alphonso rebelled against his father, and was rebelled against, in his turn, by his son Peter, whose wife he had murdered, and who, in revenge, ravaged the country that was to be his own inheritance. When he came to the throne, Peter caused the men who had been the instruments of his father's crime to be put to death by horrible and lingering tortures, which he himself superintended. This Peter, surnamed the Severe, was father to the reigning king, entitled John the Great.
The Mandingo, hearing this history of the royal house of Portugal, is made to feel that he is indeed in a country of barbarians: a fact which the pomp of their court, and the account he has heard of their religion, had almost made him forget. The old courtier becomes more and more communicative, as he sees the surprise and interest his narrative excites, and ventures at last, in strict confidence, to reveal that King John himself, before attaining to the crown, gave evidence of the qualities that marked his house. He assassinated with his own hand a man whom he considered his enemy, after inviting him to an amicable conference; he spread devastation and horror through the kingdom on his way to the throne, which, when he seized it, had several other claimants. One of these was, like himself, a son of Peter the Severe, and had the superiority of a legal birth; but he, having murdered his wife, went on foreign travel, and happening, when the throne of Portugal was left vacant, to be in the dominions of the husband of his niece,—another of the claimants,—was seized and thrown into prison. In this state of the family-affairs, John, the Grand Master of Avis, saw a chance for himself. He consented to act, until the true heir should be decided on, as Protector of the kingdom, and in this capacity opened the prisons, offering pardon to all who would enter his service. He thus formed a devoted little army, which he provided for by giving it license to plunder the enemies of order, among whom, it seemed, were dignitaries of Church and State, and holy recluse women: at least, their estates were ravaged, themselves murdered, and their dead bodies dragged through the streets in terror to others. There was no lack of recruits; the reformed convicts found the path of duty as congenial as that of crime, and all the ruined spendthrifts and vagabonds of the country were content to link their fortunes to those of the Protector. No corner of the kingdom was left unschooled by summary executions. In fine, the adherents of the Grand Master played their part so well, that the people, tired of the interregnum, begged him to make an end of it and set the crown on his own head. He complied, and the country had the relief of being ravaged by the armies of his Castilian competitor and of supporting his own forces in a more regular manner.
But all this is now over; the kingdom has enjoyed an interval of peace, and begins to look with pride on the prince who won it so adroitly and governs it so firmly. The curse which hung over the royal line seems to have been baffled, or, at least, suspended, by his irregular accession. He has held his usurped sceptre with a fortunate as well as a vigorous hand. His five sons are dutiful, united, and of princely endowments.
The Mandingo then inquires about the descent of Henry on the maternal side, and learns that his mother is a sister of the late king of England, a great and wise sovereign, whose son Henry, the fifth of the name, now reigns in his stead. He must see the island-kingdom governed by Prince Henry's cousin and namesake. But he postpones this visit,—for he hears that in a certain city of the mainland the most illustrious persons of Europe are assembled to hold a solemn council, whose decrees are to have force in all Christian states. Even the Supreme Pontiff himself is to be there, the head of the Christian world, superior to all potentates. The African will not lose such an opportunity of studying the manners and institutions of Europe. He hastens to Constance, where the concourse and the magnificence surpass his expectations. He inquires earnestly if he may be permitted to see the Great Pontiff, and learns, to his surprise, that three sacred personages claim this title, to the great confusion and misery of Christendom, which has already shed torrents of blood in these holy quarrels and sees new wars in preparation. Nor is this the worst that is to be dreaded. The power of the rightful Pontiff extends into the future life; and as each of the claimants threatens the followers of his rivals with terrible and unending punishment in the next world, the uncertainty is truly fearful. One of the pretenders is compelled by the council to renounce his claims, and is instantly thrown into prison, that he may have no opportunity of resuming them. A second withdraws his pretensions by deputy; and it is understood that the council intends to require a similar resignation of the third, that the anxiety of the world may be put to rest by the election of a fourth, whose rights and powers shall be unquestionable. There seems, however, no prospect of a speedy solution of these difficulties; and our traveller, having seen all the great personages of the assembly, with their equipages and attendants, begins to weary of the noise and bustle. But he hears that a ceremony of a very particular kind is about to take place, and stays to witness it; for he will neglect no opportunity of improvement. He is present, therefore, at the burning of John Huss, which he understands to be a great propitiatory sacrifice. When he hears, the following year, that a holocaust of the same kind has again been offered in the same place, he, of course, feels justified in recording it as an annual celebration. He notes as a remarkable circumstance, that the victim, on both occasions, is taken from the same nation; but he cannot learn that any law prescribes this selection, or that the efficacy of the sacrifice would be affected by a different choice. Another circumstance which seems to him noteworthy is, that, whereas, under their old religions, the people of these countries offered up, in preference, malefactors reserved for the purpose, or captives taken in war, the Europeans of this newer faith, on the contrary, select men without spot or blemish, and possessed of all the gifts and acquirements held in highest honor among them. He hears vaunted, on all sides, the virtue and learning of Huss, and, above all, his extraordinary eloquence,—for this gift is held in as much esteem in Europe as in Africa. He hears the same encomiums pronounced on the second victim, Jerome of Prague, and learns, at the same time, that the possession of these powers renders his doom the more necessary. He can but infer that the great, though mistaken, piety of the Christians makes them conceive that only what they have of best is worthy to be devoted to so sacred a purpose. But these reflections were made a year later. We must go back to the summer of 1415.
Saturday, April 13, 1844.
It is in the month of August that our African traveller arrives in England. The king is just setting off on a hostile expedition against a country whose inhabitants, though Christian, like the English, are held by them in detestation and contempt. Just before going, the king is obliged to cut off the head of one of his cousins. The cause of this severity is thus explained:—The late king, cousin to his own predecessor, dethroned and killed him; and it being a rule in England that what has been done once is to be done again, the present king lives in great fear of cousins. He finds the people considerate of these royal exigencies. He hears praises bestowed on the clemency of the young Henry, who remits,—so it is reported,—in the case of his kinsman, a grievous part of the punishment which the law awards to treason, only suffering the sentence to be executed in full on a man of inferior rank condemned with him as his accomplice.
Notwithstanding the disturbed state of the times, the stranger is well received, and is questioned with avidity. He is gratified to find that his country is a subject of interest to the English as well as to the Portuguese. They seem, indeed, to be fully aware that Africa is the most favored portion of the globe. They are never tired of asking about its perpetual summer, its marvellous fertility, its inexhaustible mines. Even the common soldiers in Henry's army "speak of Africa and golden joys." He finds that some of the learned maintain that continent to have been the first home of man, and believe that the terrestrial Paradise lies somewhere hidden among its mountains. When he becomes a little more familiar with his hosts, however, he finds that they entertain some notions not altogether so flattering. They are curious about a certain people of Africa who live in the caves of the earth, whose meat is the flesh of serpents, and who have no proper human speech, but only a grinning and chattering; they ask him whether his travels in his own country have extended as far as the land of the Blemmyes, a people without heads, who have their eyes and mouth set in their breasts. He answers, a little stiffly, that he has no knowledge of any such people. When they go on to inquire whether he ever ventured into the region inhabited by the Anthropophagi, explaining at the same time what peculiarities are intimated by that name, his indignation almost gets the better of him, and he denies, with some vehemence, that such wretches hold any portion of his native soil. His English friends assure him that it is nevertheless very certain that such a people live in the neighborhood of the Mountains of the Moon. When he finds that he cannot otherwise persuade them out of this injurious opinion, he ventures, though with as much delicacy as possible, to tell them, that, while on the mainland of Europe, he heard stories equally wonderful and equally absurd of their own island. In especial, he heard a Frenchman assert that the eating of human flesh was practised in some part of the dominions of the English king. He assures his English friends that he refused to credit this story, as well as some other particulars in regard to their island, which seemed to him too monstrous for belief, though they were given to him on the authority of a Greek traveller of high reputation, who had not long before visited England in company with the Emperor of the East, and who had enjoyed extraordinary opportunities for studying the manners of the most polite society of the kingdom. The Mandingo is here interrupted by his English hosts, who make haste to assure him that the Greeks are everywhere known to be great liars; that the same may be said of Frenchmen; and that, indeed, there is no nation of Europe, except their own, whose word is at all to be relied upon. The Mandingo refrains from passing so severe a judgment on the travellers who brought back such rash reports of his own country, but he permits himself to suppose that they did not themselves visit the regions whose manners they described, but received with too little examination stories prevalent in other, perhaps hostile, countries; for he is obliged to confess, with regret, that Africa is not, any more than Europe, always at peace within itself. For himself, he protests, that, even if his natural caution did not prevent him from accepting too readily the statements of the enemies of England, he should have been guarded from this error by the favorable accounts he had heard from Henry of Portugal, by whom he had been warned against believing the stories current among the common Portuguese, who held their English allies in ungrateful abhorrence, and regarded their visits in the same light as those of the plague or of famine. His English friends approve the African's candor; but he can perceive, that, so far as his own country is concerned, they remain of their first opinion. They politely turn the conversation, however, from the men of Africa to its animals,—asking, in particular, about that strange creature, shaped like a pig, but having a horse's mane, whose shadow, falling on a dog, takes from him the power of barking, and which, lurking near a sheepfold until it learns the shepherd's name, calls him by it, and, when he comes, devours him. The African does not deny that an animal possessed of these endowments may somewhere exist, but he is not acquainted with it; neither has he met with the wonderful stone, said to be found in the same creature's eye, which, being placed under a man's tongue, causes him to foretell future events. This ignorance of the natural history of his country does not raise his reputation with the English.
They give him, on their part, every opportunity of forming a correct judgment of their own country,—not concealing or extenuating things liable to be found fault with by a stranger. Indeed, he cannot enough admire the contented and cheerful character of this people, who find advantages where others would have seen deficiencies or evils, and account by latent virtues for disagreeable appearances on the surface. They congratulate themselves that their sun never oppresses them with its rays,—that their soil has not that superabundant fertility which is only a temptation to laziness. They tell him, with pride, that it is necessary, in travelling in their country, to go in strong parties and well armed: for such is the high spirit and great heart of their people, that they cannot bear to see another have more than themselves; and such is their courage, that what they desire they seize, unless the odds are plainly too great against them. One special subject of gratulation among the English he finds to be the possession of a king whose passion is military glory; inasmuch as the foreign wars in which he engages the country have the double advantage of keeping up a warlike spirit in the nation, and of clearing off the idle hands, which might become too formidable, if their natural increase were permitted. The Mandingo, seeing so much land in the island left to itself, cannot help thinking that the hands might find employment at home. But he suppresses this reflection, and, turning the conversation upon agriculture, inquires how so energetic a people as the English can be contented with so scanty a return from their land; for he has remarked that the meagreness of their crops is not wholly due to the poverty of the soil, but likewise, and in great measure, to very imperfect tillage. Many reasons are given for this neglect of their land, all more or less creditable to the English people, but not very satisfactory to the mind of the stranger. At last, however, one is brought forward which he at once accepts as sufficient: namely, the insecurity of possession. It seems that property in England often changes owners in the most unexpected manner; so that a common man, who has hired land for cultivation of its noble proprietor, is liable to be suddenly ejected, and to lose all the fruits of his industry, to say nothing of the risk he runs of laying down his life with his lease. For it appears that the nobles of the country are equally remarkable for courage with the other idle persons, and display it in the same manner. If they think themselves strong enough to add their neighbor's estate to their own, they will—so one of the Mandingo's English friends tells him—"make forcible entry and put out the possessor of the same, and also take his goods and chattels, so that he is utterly disinherited and undone."