in October she summoned Saldanha to be Premier, with the understanding that the policy of the obnoxious administration was to be restored. During this interval, the revolution had redoubled its strength. Albuquerque, with chivalrous confidence in his sovereign's promises, had personally pledged himself to the insurgents, that their wrongs should be redressed. The Queen's word was forfeited, and he had no alternative. Another Egas Moniz, he threw himself into the popular ranks once more. The object of the "Progresistas" was not a republic, but a liberal monarchy. Their policy now was to induce the queen to take refuge on board an English vessel, (by which her throne would have been legally forfeited,) and then to proclaim her young son as king, under a regency. Everything now seemed hopeful for them. Almost the whole army had deserted the queen, when the favorite general, Saldanha, who had been until this time absent from the kingdom, was recalled by the royal appointment. Contrary to all expectation, he took the side of the throne, accepted his office, brought back the army to its allegiance, marched it against the popular forces, and defeated them at the twice famous locality of Torres Vedras, on which occasion the generous Albuquerque was mortally wounded. This was on December 23d, 1846. From this moment the

revolution was lowered in character, though not in numbers. The coalition between the "Progresistas" and "Miguelistas" forfeited the moral power of the popular movement. But the moral weakness of the royal party was so plainly manifest, that nothing but an external interference could save it. That interference came from England, France, and Spain.

Our readers will remember the exciting debates in Parliament, in 1847, on the Portuguese question; in which the cabinet was defended by Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Macaulay, Lord Palmerston, and the Duke of Wellington, while Lord Stanley and Lord George Bentinck united with Messrs. Hume and Duncombe in the attack upon it. It was asserted in those debates, that "the real strength, property, talent, and numbers of the nation appeared to be on the side of the insurgents," and it was afterwards estimated that the cost of the policy pursued by England was not less than a

million pounds sterling. It seems now, that the intervention was, according to the usual practice in such cases, in the interest of despotism. The queen had not yet learned her lesson; her promises to Lord Palmerston were soon forgotten, Costa Cabral was restored to the cabinet, and in 1850 occurred yet another outbreak, this time headed by Saldanha, who succeeded at last in placing himself in power, from which he has not since been ejected. His government has been on the whole a moderate one; there has been an amnesty for political offences, and no very oppressive legislation. Donna Maria died in 1854; in 1855 the young king, Pedro, assumed the throne, at the age of seventeen. His character and abilities might give the hope of a better future for Portugal, were there not some political diseases too deeply seated for the strongest to suppress, or the wisest to heal.

To give a survey of Portuguese literature would require the microscopic industry of that unfortunate Bettinelli, whose "fifty-six primary sonneteers" are embalmed in Sydney Smith's satire. Adamson has gone far enough in that direction, but has produced nothing from all his poets comparable to Elizabeth Barrett's imaginary sonnets from the Portuguese. Among the earlier names least thoroughly forgotten are those of Gil Vicente, to read whose comedies Erasmus studied the language, Saa de Miranda, Antonio Ferreira, and the accomplished nun, Violante do Ceo. For the present, the literary reputation of the Peninsula appears to be monopolized by a man who has really deserved well of his country, the Chevalier J. B. de Almeida-Garrett. This gentleman is not unknown on this side of the Atlantic, having negotiated, in his public character, the existing treaty between Portugal and the United States. He has been a traveller and a student; his writings show a remarkable familiarity with English and French literature, and, to some extent, with the German also ; and his metrical translation into our language of his own ballad-romance of "Bernal Francez" is really a remarkable feat of literary skill. His writings cover quite a wide range of style and subject; his most favorite work being, perhaps, the "Viagens em minha terra," or "Travels at Home," which is a very agreeable series of sketches, though rather an ob

vious imitation of the French models, and perhaps exhibiting less originality than some of his other productions.

In fact, Portuguese literature suffers in general, like that of many other European nations, by the usurpation of French thoughts, topics, and phrases. French is at Lisbon, as elsewhere on the Continent, the language of society and of belleslettres. We have known persons in a Portuguese colony, who gave us as a sufficient reason for learning French, that "they were going to Lisbon"; and others who, more pathetically still, studied it "in order to have something to read." It is difficult to recall a nation from decay, when even its language is declining; and it is no wonder that foreigners despise the Portuguese idiom, if its very children disclaim it. But who has heard without loving it that sweet and tender tongue,—the sweetest perhaps of all the European dialects save the Italian only,—not gliding, like that, in one sinuous cascade of sound, but shivered into multitudinous syllables, forming a cadenced whole,-"the silver fragments of a broken voice"? Lacking some of the stateliness of the Spanish, it escapes also its hoarse aspirates; the predominance of nasal consonants, offending the eye, vanishes when the language is fitly spoken, and the m's and n's melt away upon lovely lips into the sweetness of Italian vowels. In some of the Portuguese islands the words are pronounced with a rising inflection, ascending at the end of each sentence into a sort of chant, which we have found indescribably fascinating. The more we have known of the language, the more graceful it has seemed, and we have heard an American resident of fifty years declare that he found new beauties in it every day. It was hardly fair, therefore, in Sismondi, to call the Portuguese language l'Espagnol désossé; as unjust as the parallel proverb, "Deprive a Spaniard of his virtues, and you have a good Portuguese." The difference between the nations and between the languages is not in strength, but in tone and key. In Spain there is still the pride of the Castilian, as in a living present, a satisfaction, though not a stimulus. In Portugal, though the same magnificent names that fill the ancient traditions still sound upon the modern ear, yet all men know that they have outlived their glory, and

belong to the past alone. There is no joy in the nation. That strain of melancholy which critics remark as unequalled in its poetry, pervades all else. The viola tinkles at the door of the cottage, but it summons to no gay fandango, only to the slow and monotonous chimarita. The idlest popular songs are sometimes set to music which is capable of the extremity of pathos. The spell reaches the phrases of the language. There is none of that magnificent indignation which flashes for centuries on the lips of stronger races, still lightning, though innocuous; but a perpetual "Paciencia" is the one word to which the people's tongue is turned. There are many mourning nations, but none whose doom is so deep as that of Portugal. She waited for her Sebastian, till her hope grew dim. Her remaining strength, if strength she had, has gone out into the young empire of Brazil; and she sits with her dark and sweet-voiced children around her, a widow, clad in life-long sables, and weeping eternal tears.

ART. X.-1. LAMARTINE: Cours familier de Littérature. 2. VICTOR HUGO: Les Contemplations; Les Châtiments. 3. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE: L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution.

4. COUSIN Madame de Chevreuse; Madame de Hautefort. 5. MONTALEMBERT: Lord Palmerston et Pie IX.

It is the commonest of all things to hear said now, (both in and out of France,) that since the coup d'état of December, 1851, there is no liberty of intelligence in that country, that the whole system of government goes against intellectual development, that the human mind to be fruitful must be free, and that, in short, if the present state of the nation were to endure, France would, mentally, sink into a fifth-rate power, instead of being, as she has so long been, at the head of the literature of the world. Some truth there is in all this, no doubt, and, should the present régime endure, in its present form, (which is next to an impossibility,) the level of men's

moral natures in France would be so low, that it would certainly be difficult for them to rise to any eminence in the sphere of intellect. But this is to be feared only for the generation to come. In the case of that which now actually exists, all the good effects of tyranny are strongly visible. We must explain. If you oppress free men,- men who have been used to let their faculties expand under the guardianship of liberal institutions, - men whose fame is the result of such institutions, and whose belief in them has the enthusiasm of a religious creed,- if, we say, you oppress such men as these, you increase their force, and therefore their value, a hundred or a thousand fold; you give them for resistance a capacity they had not for co-operation; you furnish them with a lever whereby to lift the globe, and many a one who, in his own party, is merely counted among the rank and file, becomes a general, if by attacking him you oblige him to put forth all the energies God has granted him, of which he himself was perhaps ignorant till then. No! when tyranny comes upon free men in all their maturity, it never crushes them intellectually; on the contrary, it makes combatants, and often heroes, of them. But if tyranny lasts, and overshadows the cradle of a new generation, the children who grow up and as men come to a compromise with it, who at once serve it and despise it, who sacrifice to their fear or their interest what their conscience and their honor dictate,- these are debased, and from them will spring nothing admirable, because nothing honest, nothing elevated, because nothing true.

Power and tyranny are by no means one and the same. Submission to the utmost exercise of the utmost power may be compatible with the largest possible development of selfesteem and dignity. It suffices for this, that the power be lawful. Tyranny is illegal power, the power which men deny. Submission to it is always debasing, because, in such submission, men commit a wanton abandonment of self, and whoever obeys that which he neither respects nor believes in has commenced a moral and intellectual descent which ends only with that extreme step in the process of degradation,— the confusion of all distinction between right and wrong. France has by no means arrived at this stage. Whether she