LAND AND PEOPLE
[to 1383 A.D.]
The reasons for which Portugal is neglected are precisely those which in some eyes make her truly lovable. For a half-century art has done almost nothing for the natural river highways; and the Douro, the Guadiana, and the Tagus flow through this kingdom like the wandering rivulets of great English parks. The large towns of the interior, Coimbra, Santarem, Evora, and Miranda, look like pretty kiosks rising about flowering thickets; peaceful retreats, solitudes animated with a life that jogs quietly along and does not go with leaps and bounds as in France, where a satisfied humanity stands still, instead of rushing into the unknown risks of the future.
The cities of the coast, Lisbon, Oporto, appear more like dwelling-places conveniently placed the better to enjoy the sunlight and the ocean breezes than wide-awake communities guarding their mercantile interests in the commercial exchange of the products of the Old World with the riches of the New.
[to 1147 A.D.]
If the Portuguese had been as skilful speculators as they were intrepid sailors and distinguished warriors, Henry the Navigator, who set the example of maritime conquest, Dias, Vasco da Gama, Cabral, Albuquerque, valiant captains identified with all the glories of the Aviz dynasty, would have imitated the speculative prudence of the Dutch, their rivals. And if, when the illustrious house of Braganza opened the era of national liberties, the people had had in their heads less of poetic imagination and more power of reason; if, courageous and adventurous as they were, they had shown themselves more positive, the French, at first, and then the English, would never have invaded their treasury, exploited their soil, and paralysed their industries. Truly a childlike nation, satisfied with little, pursuing the ideal, economical without avarice, pure in morals, sober, generous, hospitable, the Portuguese have bred heroes in place of diplomats, poets in place of capitalists: they knew how bravely to defend their country against the Romans, the Arabs, and the Spaniards, and still more recently against the army of Napoleon. They have kept themselves a free nation, independent and original, possessing a language, a literature, distinct manners and customs, and governed politically by one of the most liberal constitutions of Europe.
To make Portugal complete, Brazil and the colonies were necessary to this country whose language is spoken on the European continent by only five millions of men; and again the narrow domain which so restricts the use of this tongue creates an obstacle to the popularity of the works to which language gives birth, just as its poverty impedes the development of the fine arts. Jealousy and indifference, the double affliction of southern nations, have curbed the artistic and literary aspirations of the Portuguese. What man of genius would resolve on a career of self-denial only to be calumniated and persecuted as was Prince Henry, to achieve a miserable end like Admiral Pacheo, or like Camoens; or to languish forgotten, like the painter Glama, reduced to making tavern signs; like the sculptor Machado de Castro and the founder Costa, creators of an equestrian statue of José I, worthy of ranking with the greatest art works of the eighteenth century? Encouragement and recompense are the safeguards of emulation, and emulation, utilising the moral resources of a people, permits them the use of its advantages to rise to the level of other nations.
Except for a few coins, the Phœnicians, the Phocæans, and the Carthaginians have left almost no trace in Portugal of their occupation or their passing; but the touch of Rome clings better than in Spain. Cæsar’s Pax Julia sleeps thirty feet beneath the city of Beja and needs only the simple power of will to be awakened, with its population of statues, its inscriptions, and its frescoes; Liberalitas Julia, the Ebora of Ptolemy, planted like Beja upon high ground in the province of Alemtejo, has a double character, that of a Grecian town with its temple of Diana and that of a Roman city with its great aqueduct, immense works, wrought under the hand of Quintus Sertorius, who made himself master eighty years before the Christian era. The aristocracy of Pax Julia and Liberalitas Julia was accustomed to spend its summers in the little municipality of Alcacer, where there was a famous bath under the protection of a local divinity, the nymph Salacia. Braganza, the Juliobriga; Lisbon, the Felicitas Julia of the Augustan era, had equally received their political baptism from the conqueror of Gaul; while ancient Lusitania, become a Julian or Cæsarian country, easily adapted the popular customs and organisations of the Roman government to its Carthaginian institutions.
Vespasian and Trajan made an important town of Chaves; Viseu is the Vesontium of the consul D. Brutus; Lamego, the Urbs Lamacœnorum of Trajan. Setubal occupies a terrace opposite the ancient Roman colony of Cetobriga. At Braga, Ponte de Lima, Salvaterra, we find traces of amphitheatres, aqueducts, baths, and temples; so that well-directed excavations would evoke the manes of that sovereign people which, governing the universe, kept watchful station on the coast of Hispania to keep an eye on Numidia.
[to 1170 A.D.]