established that Brazil had no longer any need of Portugal. The French invasion of Portugal thus virtually gave birth to a new empire in a new hemisphere. Brazil now became a kingdom, and began. to develop herself; and when the court returned to the mother country in 1821, Brazil insisted on her liberty, offering her throne to the prince royal of Portugal, which, after some vain efforts to reunite the two countries, was accepted. At this moment, next to the United States and Canada, Brazil is the best governed country in America. Her internal resources are inexhaustible; but the new government has not had sufficient time yet to develop and utilise them fully.

CHAPTER X.

RÉSUMÉ.

In the preceding pages we have gone into greater details than we intended, but we do not regret having done so, since those details best explain themselves. We have noted all the turning-points of modern history, and explained how the destinies of the several races were shaped; and both the resemblances among them and the diversities between them have been fully elucidated. The periods which most require general attention are those relating to—

1. The emigration of nations from Asia into Europe, and the gradual distribution of the Germanic tribes over all the countries of the West.

2. The restoration of the Western Empire by Charlemagne, and the development of the Saracens in Spain.

3. The consolidation of all kingdoms by the establishment of Feudalism.

4. The Crusades, and the institution of chivalry. 5. The Tartar conquest of Russia, and the Turkish conquest of the Eastern Empire.

6. The struggles for popular freedom, and the foundation of municipal towns and cities.

7. The Reformation of Religion, and the reorganisation of empires and governments.

8. The discoveries of Columbus and Gama, and the colonising and commercial enterprises they gave birth to.

9. The struggles for freedom, commencing with the war of American independence.

10. The French Revolution, and the convulsions caused by Napoleon I.

11. The unifications of Italy and Germany.

12. The new order of things that has succeeded the most recent convulsions.

The theatre of the Ancient World was Asia, and only towards the end of the epoch did the empires of Greece and Rome arise. The theatre of the Modern World has been Europe wholly, the other continents and places in them being noticeable merely for such connection as they may have established with Europe. The new era begins with the emigration of nations from Asia, when the figures of Greece and Rome disappear, making way for nations hitherto unknown and undreamt of, that roll over each other like ocean billows, sweeping away the Roman power before them, but only when that power had become too corrupt to endure. The old world, found wanting after prolonged trial, is forced to fall back, and give place to newer races permitted to prove their worth. The first of these were the Goths, who are supposed to have been of non-Asiatic origin, though settled for a time in the north of Asia. They returned to Europe in the fourth century, bringing after them many nations, of whom the Huns were the most prominent. The empire of Rome was now overturned, which enabled the bishop of Rome to assume a great amount of temporal power and dignity, both of which were conceded to him from an idea that there must be a supreme authority some

where, and from the absence of any other aspirant for such authority. The other kingdoms of Europe were simultaneously occupied and repeopled, after which the wave of inundation subsided. A faint effort to revive the empire of Rome was made in the reign of Justinian by Belisarius and Narses, but the internal decay of the empire was too great for any such effort to succeed. The barbarians established themselves forcibly in every place, first in all the Western countries, and afterwards also in the East; and the French, becoming the central power, established themselves as such, being also the first to accept Christianity. The Anglo-Saxons in Britain received Christianity after them, but became sooner distinguished both for their intellectual and religious culture, and they sent over Christian teachers to Germany and Switzerland, by whom both general knowledge and religion were propagated. This gave to all the countries of western Europe a nearly uniform constitution, and opened one channel of communication between peoples that had already become dissimilar.

The first great king was Charlemagne, by whom the Western Empire was re-established. Previous to this the Arabs had established themselves in Spain, and had made violent efforts to conquer France, from which, however, they were heroically repelled. The empire of Charlemagne was great, but that of the Arabs was in all respects greater. The first days of Mahomedanism were barbarous, and it is recorded of Omar that he burnt the Alexandrian library; but in the days of Almansoor and Haroun-al-Raschid, the latter of whom was contemporaneous with Charlemagne, the Arabs were the best educated and most refined people in the world. They had a fair share

of civilisation, all the institutions of social life, all the arts of industry: but the barbarians of Europe had none. The Franks in particular were not only barbarous, but grossly immoral; the other Gothic nations were perhaps not equally bad, and the Scandinavian branch of the race was probably decidedly better, but these had not yet developed themselves. The best model that Charlemagne had to follow to civilise his people was that presented by the Arabs, which was far nobler than the model held up by the Greeks; and thus France and Europe came to borrow all their civilisation from Asia. Algebra and the numerals, chemistry, medicine, and geography, were all learnt from the Arabs, and with them all the conveniences, and many of the refinements, of civilised life.

At the same time that Charlemagne contended with barbarism on the continent, Alfred was doing the same good service to England. Both these sovereigns founded schools and promoted the study of the sciences, and the latter also gave his subjects an independent constitution. But the age they lived in was that of iron, and their fostering care died with them. The empire of Charlemagne was very soon broken up, and with it was lost much of the civilisation he had planted. In England, the Normans, for the time at least, uprooted all that Alfred had taken so much pains to cultivate. The world's history was thus thrown back for three hundred years.

The first era of modern history was that of the peoples. All the conquests effected by the barbarians were popular undertakings, the chiefs who directed them having scarcely higher privileges than their followers. The later movements of the Normans