guese, was blown up, which caused Faria y Sousa to observe, "it was no fable that armed men were seen in the air on this occasion," a caustic witticism at the expense of the Portuguese and Spaniards of those times, who maintained that celestial champions fought for them in the air. After eight months, the viceroy entered the fort with reinforcements. At the head of twenty-five hundred Portuguese, he marched out and gave battle to the enemy in their trenches. What Sobieski accomplished at Vienna a century later, now took place: the Moslem host was overthrown with prodigious slaughter. De Castro, according to his habit when victorious, re-entered Goa after the relief of Diu, with the pomp of a Roman consular triumph, so that Queen Catherine remarked, that he had conquered like a Christian and triumphed like a heathen.

Don Luis Ataide, who had fought with Charles V. at Muhlberg and Tunis, assumed the government of the East Indian colonies in 1536. During his command occurred a conspiracy, the most remarkable in history, when considered in all its bearings. Certain atrocious acts perpetrated by the Portuguese in the isles of the Indian Ocean, added to the accumulated wrongs previously endured by the natives, aroused a spirit of revenge, which culminated in a league entered into by all the princes of the Indies. The Portuguese possessions were prospectively partitioned among the neighboring sovereigns; and the storm, like one of the terrific monsoons of those latitudes, was to burst at once on the devoted invaders from Diu to the Moluccas, and sweep them from India forever. Not only was the plan well concerted, but for five years the secret was preserved undisclosed, a marvelous thing, when we consider the vast distances over which it extended, and the treachery, the selfishness, the instability, of the oriental character. The league of Vercingetorix is the only one that resembles it in magnitude. Goa was suddenly invested by one hundred thousand men, two thousand elephants, and three hundred and fifty cannon. This memorable siege lasted two years. Chaûl was attacked by a similar army, and all the possessions of the Portuguese were reduced to the greatest 31

VOL. XXIV.

extremity. At length the natives retired in despair, and peace was restored.

During the annexation of Portugal to Spain, which took place under Philip II., her East India possessions were neglected. At one time, a period of three years elapsed without any official correspondence between Goa and the home government! The languor of the mother country communicated itself to her colonies, but the subsequent independence of Portugal might have revived their declining prosperity, if it had not been for several causes which had already undermined them, and would in any case have eventually proved their ruin, as other states have learned to their cost. The two principal causes were, that the progress of events was too rapid to be wisely controlled by a people that had no precedents for guidance in the settlement and government of distant possessions, and because the colonies were too remote from Portugal. That England has been able to maintain such a firm grasp of her Indian acquisitions is owing as much to the increased facilities of intercourse and transportation, as to her own enterprise.

Among secondary causes of decay springing from those mentioned above, was the monopoly enjoyed by the crown in the commerce of the colonies, which tended to engender universal corruption among the foreign residents and officials. Another source of mischief was rotation in office, the viceroy being so frequently changed, that, while the unscrupulous found time to make fortunes, the upright and capable governors were removed before they had scarcely learned the requirements of their position, and the character of the natives, and could perfect their plans for improvement. The introduction of the Inquisition, in 1560, was another cause which might alone have worked the destruction of these colonies. That scourge of Christendom invented by the modern Babylon, which, like the serpent in the fable, has mortally stung every nation that has taken it into its bosom, displayed its insidious power even here, at the ends of the earth, until Pietro della Valle could say "that there was more security and pleasure among pagans, or even among heretics,

than in this Portuguese city (Goa), where all strangers were regarded with horror, and met with nothing but baseness and treachery." Thus a republic of priests was virtually formed who adorned their capital with no less than two hundred churches, on which they lavished the collected wealth of provinces.

It is not strange that the power of the Portuguese in India declined, with such elements of death gnawing at its vitals. On the contrary, it is a proof of the astonishing vigor and ability of their founders, that these foreign provinces, so distant from Europe, and supported by so small a kingdom, should for nearly a century maintain an unbroken course of prosperity and glory.

At the commencement of the seventeenth century, the Dutch made their appearance in the East Indies. The English followed, and the two powers combining, gradually stripped the Portuguese of their possessions. Bombay was ceded to England as a part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II.; the English demanded Salsette as a pendant, and ended by appropriating most of Portuguese India.

Of all her vast Oriental dominions, Portugal now retains only two or three stations, in Africa, and Diu, Damaun and Goa, in Hindostan. Macao, in China, is held tributary to that empire. Ormus, "that great city wherein were made rich all that had ships on the sea by reason of her costliness," continued prosperous under her foreign rule. But Shah Abbas re-captured the place, and within the last century it has fallen rapidly to decay; a few huts alone survive to mark the site of a magnificence which rivaled that of Aradus and Tyre. The fisherman spreads his net where the palaces of princes arose, and the scream of the sea-bird is alone heard, instead of the rapturous strains of the viol and the ghittern that once floated over the moonlight billow.

The history of the Portuguese in India presents one of those brilliant phenomena in the career of the human race which occasionally appear during the lapse of ages, dazzling the world for a time, and then vanishing in eternal gloom. Imagine for a moment that Portugal, a little strip on the

seaboard of Europe, should once have exercised sovereignty beyond the rising of the sun, over regions extending from Africa to the Pacific; imagine Albuquerque seated on his throne at Goa, assuming the courtly magnificence of an Oriental potentate, and deciding the fate of nations; behold him navigating invincible armaments over the Indian ocean, and storming, at the head of a veteran band, cities coeval with the rise of civilization in the East. Contemplate such spectacles as these, and then compare them with the present condition of Portugal and her colonies. And yet, in our indifference for the Portugal of our time, let us not forget the greatness of the task which she accomplished. Her navigators opened to the world a new channel for commerce, and diverted the great monopolies enjoyed by Venice and Genoa; the progress of the Christian arms in the Indies acted as a check on the advancement of Islamism, and wasted the resources of the Grand Turk, drawing his longing gaze away from the cross on the spire of St. Stephens', at Vienna. It was not savages, frightened by a horse or an arquebuse, whom the Portuguese fought in India, but Mamelukes and Janissaries, the terror of Christendom, and powerful fleets, aided, it is said, by Venetian gold. As pioneers in India, the Portuguese pointed out a way to wealth and glory, which the Anglo-Saxon has not disdained to follow. Nor let it be thought that the impress of the Portuguese dominion has entirely passed away in those distant lands. While the Dutch and the French came and went, and are there no more, forever, the Portuguese have left traces in the East that will last for ages to come; their language still remains there, a memorial of their former prosperity, and the medium of commercial transactions; their descendants are still found there in large numbers, although much degenerated; and when they have passed away, the Portuguese conquest will still have an enduring monument in the Lusiad of Luis de Camoens. In India he suffered abuse, dwelt an exile at Macao, and returned to his native land to die of starvation. He repaid the neglect of his country by singing her triumphs in imperishable verse.

ARTICLE III-PERSONAL PERILS OF THE PREACHER.

It is very natural for men to regard the circumstances in which the Christian minister is placed by his profession, as peculiarly favorable to his own spirituality of life. The multitude almost envy the godly eminence of those commissioned with the gospel's messages of glory and mercy. They seem to think that the conspicuous position of the preacher necessarily lifts him above all other men in piety, as well as in the character of his professional utterances. They find him always ready with a prayer and holy phraseology to apply to others' wants; therefore they imagine him as equally equipped against assaults upon himself. He can at any time confirm the weak, and point the trembling to God's treasury of promises; therefore it is believed that he himself lives in the very holiest sanctuary, surrounded constantly by abundant means of grace. Thus he is regarded not only as a servant, but a favorite of the Almighty, about whom special strength is thrown, and on whom all-sufficient grace is shed.

And sometimes the minister himself believes all this; with nothing to bid him raise the mantle of official power, and see what he would be without it, and self-deceived by the facility of heavenly utterances to which he is accustomed, he forgets that many may be less in Jesus' earthly kingdom, and yet be greater in the heavenly, than he. Unless with Arthur Dimmesdale, some guilty secret burns like a scarlet letter in his heart, and constantly torments him for concealing such a shame beneath the garments of mock holiness, he will, the last of all professed disciples, feel the possibility of being cast away from God; and as there are (thank God!) few Arthur Dimmesdales in the ministry, consciously wearing one face to themselves, another to the multitude, few among the clergy realize the dangers of their high vocation,—all the more imminent, because the very grandeur of the office raises them to a bewildering preeminence of labor and authority.

But the Apostle Paul was not in ignorance of these perils.