Roman dominion shrinks a little; and we begin to think that Ovid might
have escaped his tyrant.[3] The ascertained confines of the world were
now, however, to be more than doubled in the course of one century; and to
Prince Henry of Portugal, as the first promoter of these vast discoveries,
our attention must be directed.

[Footnote 3: But the empire of the Romans filled the world; and when that
empire fell into the hands of a single person, the world became a safe
and dreary prison for his enemies. The slave of imperial despotism,
whether he was condemned to drag the gilded chain in Rome and his
senate, or to wear out a life of exile on the barren rocks of Seriphus,
or the frozen banks of the Danube, expected his fate in silent despair.
To resist was fatal, and it was impossible to fly. On every side he was
encompassed with a vast extent of sea and land, which he could never
hope to traverse without being discovered, seized, and restored to his
irritated master. GIBBON'S Decline and Fall, vol. i. p. 97, Oxford
Edition.]

[Illustration: Contemporary map of the world.]

[Illustration: 1490 map of the world includes only Europe, Asia and the
northern 1/4 of Africa. Excludes the Americas, Greenland, and
Australia.]


PRINCE HENRY OF PORTUGAL; HIS MOTIVES FOR DISCOVERY.

This prince was born in 1394. He was the third son of John the First of
Portugal and Philippa, the daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.
That good Plantagenet blood on the mother's side was, doubtless, not