The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-04-01

coined nor adapted it for herself. The
figure has fallen 70 us as a heritage of
empire
This is best shown by the fact that
the phrase has been a sometime pos
session of several nations. We unex-
pectedly encounter ii in the works of
the quaint Thomas Fuller who, in his
sketch of the life of Sir Francis Drake.
says that though a poor private man,
the admiral hereafter undertook to
avenge himself upon so mighty mon
arch, who, asa not cOntented that the
sun riseth and setteth in his dominions.
may seem to desire TO make all his own
where he Shineth." There is no doubt
about the monarch here referred to. nor
of the fervOr with which on so many
occasions Drake ''singed the Spanish
kings beard 1t was in the reign of
Philip II that the Spanish monarchy at
tanned its highest point of splendor and
dominion. When the Ambassador Con
domar was combining business and
pleasure at the English court he babe
Spanish grandee who was returning to
is own country remember him to the
IN" which he had not seen since his
esidence in England and which he
you'd be sure to find in Spain
The Spaniards, however, had long
/ been conscious that the sun way al
ways shining on some of their terrific
ries- In one Of Howells we'll known
| collections of letters. published in 1929
occurs this passage: I'm Philip IFS
time this crown came to his grandeur
and truly. to give the Spaniard his due
he is a mighty monarch, who hath do
miniOnS in Europe, Asia, Africa and
America. So the sun shines all the
four and twenty hours of the natural
day upon some part or other of his
country, for part. of the antipodes are
subject to him" And in his account of
Historic Phrases" Buchanan quotes
the following sentence of a Dutch an
thor in 1860: The king of Spain is a
great potentate, who stands with one
foot in the east and the other in the
west, and the sun never sets that it
does not shine on some of his domin-
ions. The same idea also finds ex-
preston in Guarinis Pastor Fido."
written some seventy years earlier, in
which Catherine of Austria is spoken
Of as the illustrious daughter of the
monarch on whose empire the sun
never sets.
But Portugal had also put forward
her claim to an ever present sun. and
certainly not without some show of
reason. Even now in proportion to the
| Importance of the mother country the
Portuguese dependencies are of con-
siderable extent No doubt she was
surpassed by Spain in the great burst
OF maritime discovery. But within the
century preceding the birth of Camoens
the Cape OF Good Hope was doubled
by VascO da CANA, while Brazil was
| discovered by Cabral in 1900. Here was
expansion east and west. more than
enough for a poet to build upon: and
in the 'Lusiad," Camoens saws of the
Portuguese empire that "the sun looks
upon it when it rises, it still beholds if
at midday, and when it sets it sets be-
hind it" In whatever form the figure
is presented, there can be no doubt
that it is entirely poetic in its origin.
| though political foresight may have
FASTENED to adopt it. Its cossnopolitan
virtues have endowed il with all the
more force and vitality. Schiller uses
IL with effect in his Don Carlos" and
IN the course of the PeninSular war
Napoleon deemed it political to remind
his army that the sun never sets on
the immense empire bequeathed by
Charles W The phrase seems at some
tins or other to have been in the mouth
of every nation that had the smallest
pretensions TO employ &c, though il no
doubt obtained its widest currency saf
ter the discovery of the new world. The
Romans adapted it to their state of
geographical and astronomical knowI
edge. TIbulluS expressed il in poetry
and RutiiiuS in prose. And 1900 wears
afterWard their descendants are sneak
ing of the contemplated visit of the
queen to their shores as that Of a. queen
and empress on whose dominion the
sun never sets.