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physicians and apothecaries. It was on this occasion that M. Guizot, then minister of public instruction, made his celebrated reply to the members of the Academy of Medicine, who came to ask him to refuse Dr. Hahnemann permission to exercise his profession in France.

"Either," said M. Guizot, "homoeopathy is a chimera, or it is not. If it is, it will fall of itself; if it is not, it will remain in spite of all the measures which can be taken to retard its development."

In Paris he had wonderful success. His waiting-rooms were crowded with patients. He devoted himself to the practice of his art, to the propagation of his doctrines, and to the instruction of his pupils with an energy and ardor seldom equalled in a man of fourscore. For a period of eight years he was the fashionable physician of Paris. Until within a few weeks of his death he continued to enjoy excellent health, and died in 1843, aged eighty-eight years, leaving behind him in every country of Christendom a considerable number of ardent disciples. Besides his labors as a physician, he published books enough for a small library. Including his translations, he gave the world about a hundred volumes upon medicine and chemistry.

Hahnemann was one of the most active, vehement, sincere, and persevering of mortals. Whether his doctrine be true or false, he has done immense good in the world by exciting inquiry, and by assisting to deliver the sick from those pernicious and violent remedies which killed more people than they cured, and aggravated disease as often as they relieved it. Bleeding, blistering, and mercury, how can we be too grateful to a man who put them out of fashion? And how we ought to bless the memory of him who delivered little children from those appalling doses of salts, castor-oil, and rhubarb with which they used to be terrified and griped.

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ALFONSE I., OF PORTUGAL.

THE other day, a writer began a satirical article by telling a story of a general, who, before leading his troops to battle, addressed them thus:

ee

Soldiers, remember that you are Portuguese!"

How little he knew
The Portuguese are

Here the reader was expected to laugh, -the writer evidently supposing that the idea of a native of Portugal having national pride was ridiculous in the highest degree. the people or the history of that country! proud of their native land, even to bigotry; and the time has been when Portugal gave law to vast regions of the earth, and when the Portuguese uniform was a passport to respect in Europe, and to homage in Asia. The navigators of Portugal preceded and inspired Columbus himself. It was Portugal that first made the East Indies tributary to Europe, and Portugal that gave the great impulse to the commerce which has enriched, by turns, Holland and England.

This little kingdom owed its greatness to one man, Alfonse, -the first who bore the title of King of Portugal.

In the year 1086, when the Moors still possessed the largest and best portion of the whole Spanish peninsula, the King of Castile, apprehending the invasion of his states by the Moorish host, sent to the King of France, and to the Duke of Burgundy, for help. A gallant band of French and Burgundian knights and men-at-arms responded to this demand, and spent three years in the Peninsula, fighting the Moors, and extending the area of Christian rule. Among the provinces wrested by their aid from the Infidels, was one which forms part of the modern kingdom of Portugal.

The prince who commanded the Burgundian portion of the

allied army was Henry, brother of the reigning Duke of Burgundy. To him, as a reward for his services, the King of Spain gave in marriage his illegitimate daughter, Theresa, and assigned for their maintenance the province just mentioned, naming his son-in-law Count of Portugal, and rendering him master and lord of the country, -him and his heirs forever. Thus it was that Portugal became an independent power. The new count fixed his residence north of the Douro, where the ruins of his castle are still to be seen. He passed his life in warring upon the Moors, performing great exploits, and died in 1112, after reigning seventeen years, leaving his son, Alfonse, three years old, and appointing his wife regent of the country and guardian of his boy.

Theresa, a weak and foolish woman, surrounded with flatterers, and ruled by favorites, governed the province so badly, that Alfonse, when he was sixteen years of age, yielding to the entreaties of the nobles and the clamor of the people, seized the supreme authority, and expelled his mother and her favorites from the palace. She raised the standard of resistance, and gathered an army about her. The youthful count led his forces against her, defeated her in battle, took her prisoner, and kept her in close confinement until her death, which occurred three years after. The young King of Castile was nephew of Theresa, and led an army to her deliverance. The Count of Portugal defeated him also, and remained thenceforth the undisputed ruler of the country.

He grew to the stature of a giant. In a small Portuguese city, near the ruins of the castle in which he was born, a suit of his armor is preserved, which proves that he must have been six feet and ten inches in height. Notwithstanding his excessive tallness, he was wonderfully strong, graceful, and alert. As he attained mature age, he gave every indication of possessing both excellent talents and a lofty character. He was, indeed, one of the very ablest and best of modern rulers; he is esteemed by the Portuguese as the English esteem their King Alfred. In Portugal, to this day, Alfonse I. is another name for all that is high, noble, wise and chivalric.

The grand object of the Christian princes in the peninsula, for

eight hundred years, was to expell the Moors. Eight hundred years of almost continuous war! The reason why this contest lasted so long was that neither party was united in itself. The Moors were divided into a multitude of communities, each governed by its own petty chieftain, so that it was only on great occasions, under the influence of great terror or confident hopes, that they acted in concert; and when, by their momentary union, signal advantages had been won, they soon fell to quarrelling among themselves. It was so with the Christians also. Alfonse, as we have seen, had no sooner grasped the reins of power, than he was involved in war with his own mother. When she was overthrown, her cause was espoused by a neighboring king, which led to another war, in which both Castile and Portugal suffered terrible disasters, each being in turn overrun and devastated by the other. Nothing ended this contest but the terror of a new invasion by the Moors, which threatened the destruction of both belligerents. In view of this great peril, the Pope interposed, and induced each of them to give up all his conquests from the other, and join against the common foe.

The Moors invaded Portugal with a prodigious army. Portuguese historians say that it consisted of two hundred thousand men, commanded by five infidel kings, and that Count Alfonse could only muster a force of thirteen thousand Christian troops with which to oppose them. But, they add, God showed himself clearly on the side of his chosen servants. They relate that when Alfonse saw the mighty host of the infidels, and considered the insignificance of his own army, he faltered, and was half inclined to avoid a battle. Suddenly a holy hermit, who dwelt and prayed in the neighboring forest, appeared before him, and bade him be of good cheer.

"Go forth to the combat in the morning," he said, "when you hear the bell ring for early mass, and turn to the east."

He obeyed the heavenly mandate. "As he was wheeling his troops into line," continued the Portuguese narrators, "he beheld in the sky the image of Christ on the cross, and he heard a voice proceeding from it, assuring him of victory, and promising him a kingly crown, which should be worn by sixteen of

his descendants." All the histories written in that age abound in marvels of this kind.

Alfonse attacked the foe; the battle was long and bloody; the towering form of the Christian commander was seen wherever the fight was hottest. His troops, inspired by his brilliant and inexhaustible valor, did not forget that "they were Portuguese," and fought with a constancy equal to his own. The five Moorish kings were slain, and a vast number of their immediate followers; the Moorish host was broken, at length, and fled in wild panic back to their own provinces, leaving Count Alfonse master of extended frontiers. At the close of this great day the victorious soldiers gathered round their giant-chief and proclaimed him King of Portugal. He accepted the title; and to this day the Portuguese look upon the plain in which this battle was fought as the birth-place of the monarchy. The plain of Ourique is the Bunker Hill of Portugal.

No sooner was Alfonse delivered from this danger, than he was involved in another war with one of his Christian neighbors, in the course of which he was badly wounded, and once defeated. While he was still in the dominions of his Christian foe, news reached him that the Moors were again advancing toward the frontiers of Portugal. Compelled by this intelligence to return home, he fought the Moors with varying fortune, until, in 1145, he again won over them a signal victory, which enlarged his dominions, and gave him a short interval of peace.

During this respite from the toils of war, being then thirtyseven years of age, King Alfonse married Matilda, daughter of one of the Christian princes of the peninsula. She was a

woman worthy to be the wife of such a king, and well fitted to govern his kingdom while he was absent defending it. Three sons and three daughters were born to them, whom they educated in a manner far beyond the customs of the age in which they lived. These parents succeeded in impressing their characters upon their offspring, who continued, for several generations, to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors. To this fact, as much as to the personal virtues of Alfonse, the subsequent greatness of Portugal was due.

At the time of his marriage, Lisbon, the present capital of

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