The French had dealt largely in false promises; they were sincere in their threats, and on the very day when this proclamation was issued at Lisbon, that sincerity was proved at Beja. ♦NATIONAL FEELING OF THE PORTUGUEZE.♦ But as the Portugueze had not been deceived, neither were they now to be intimidated. Their character had been totally mistaken by their insolent oppressors. They, like the Spaniards, had a deep and ever-present remembrance of their former greatness. It was sometimes expressed with a vanity which excited the contempt of those who judge hastily upon that imperfect knowledge which is worse than ignorance; more generally it produced a feeling of dignified and melancholy pride. The kingdom had decayed, but the degeneracy of the people was confined to the higher ranks, whom every possible cause, physical and moral, combined to degrade. Generation after generation, they had intermarried, not merely within the narrow circle of a few privileged families, but oftentimes in their own; uncles with their nieces, nephews with their aunts. The canonical law was dispensed with for these alliances; but no dispensing power could set aside the law of nature, which rendered degeneracy the sure consequence. Thus was the breed deteriorated; and education completed the mischief. The young fidalgo was never regarded as a boy: as soon as the robes, or rather bandages of infancy were laid aside, he appeared in the dress of manhood, was initiated in its forms and follies, and it was rather his misfortune than his fault, if, at an early age, he became familiar with its vices. When he arrived at manhood, no field for exertion was open to him, even if he were qualified or disposed to exert himself. The private concerns of embellishing and improving an estate were as little known in Portugal as those public affairs in which the nobility of Great Britain are so actively engaged: if not in office, he was in idleness, and his idleness was passed in the capital. A wasteful expenditure made him a bad landlord, and a bad paymaster; a deficient education made him a bad statesman; and well was it if the lax morality which the casuists had introduced into a corrupt religion, did not make him a bad man. Exceptions there were, because there are some dispositions so happily tempered, that their original goodness can never be wholly depraved, however unpropitious the circumstances in which they are placed; but men, for the most part, are what circumstances make them, and these causes of degeneracy were common to all of the higher class. On the other hand, the middle classes were improved, and the peasantry uncorrupted. Their occupations were the same as those of their forefathers; nor did they differ from them in any respect, except what was a most important one at this time, that a long interval of peace, and their frequent intercourse with the Spaniards, had effaced the old enmity between the two nations, so that along the border the languages were intermingled, and intermarriages so common, as to have produced a natural and moral union. They were a fine, hospitable, noble-minded race, respected most by those who knew them best. The upper boughs were scathed, but the trunk and the root were sound.