of administrative capacity-a want of good manners. Call a Portuguese a cheat, a robber, a coward, and he may forgive you; but accuse him of bad mannerswhat he expresses by "mal criado”—and he never will. They expect to receive from others the same consideration they concede. Now, Her Most Faithful Majesty had great hauteur, which begat a brusqueness and rudeness of deportment not calculated to render her respected by her lieges. But it was not so with her royal consort, Dom Fernando. His gracious manners and agreeable disposition made him popular with all classes; and as he never meddled in political quarrels, but was ever ready to interpose his kind offices in favor of any deserving individual of whatever faction, he had around him hosts of attached and influential friends; so that, on the decease of his wife, he became King-Regent with an assent almost universal. It speaks well for both the royal parents that their sons have been admirably educated-in mind, manners and exercises. They often were seen in public unattended, and no otherwise distinguished than by their unpretending deportment and gentlemanly address,

CHAPTER XIII.

CINTRA-PALACE-QUINTA OF JOHN DE CASTRO-PANORAMIC VIEW-TORRES VEDRAS-COIMBRA-STORY OF INEZ DE CASTRO-OPORTO.

BUT one does not tarry long in Lisbon. There are places in its vicinity which insist upon your early presence;―more than others, Cintra. Known to me by reputation as one of the loveliest spots on earth,* I was still wholly unprepared for its excessive beauty. It resembles enchantment, and one must borrow new epithets of commendation to describe it. Surprise overpowers admiration as the scene bursts upon you. Nothing is more bleak, somber and desolate than the waste and stony wall that, rising high over the Lisbon road, protects Cintra from the profane eye. But the rock once turned, and what a fairy scene opens to the eye! The most gorgeous foliage, of deepest green, gigantic trees, savage hills, untamed forests, waterfalls,

* "I know not how," says Mr. Southey, "to describe to you the strange beauties of Cintra: it is, perhaps, more beautiful than sublime, more grotesque than beautiful; yet I never beheld scenery more calculated to fill the beholder with admiration and delight. This immense rock or mountain is in part covered with scanty herbage; in parts it rises into conical hills, formed of such immense stones, and piled so strangely, that all the machinery of deluges and volcanoes must fail to satisfy the inquiry for their origin. But the abundance of wood forms the most striking feature in this retreat from the Portuguese summers. The houses of the English are seen scattered on the ascent, half hid among cork-trees, elms, oaks, hazels, walnuts, the tall canes, and the rich green of the lemon gardens."

cataracts, towers, domes, and Moorish ruins, labyrinthine paths, and gushing rivulets, quintas, and palaces. In what other place under the sun have nature and art united to form so glorious a scene!

I ascended the lofty and precipitous peak once surmounted by the principal stronghold of the Lusitanian Moors. Its walls seem a part of the rock out of which they spring; and as I looked from out of its watchtowers, surveyed the vast distance below, and felt with what toil and fatigue my unopposed ascent had been accomplished, I marveled how armed men, holding with determined hand the approaches to the castle, could have been overcome, till "famine or the ague ate them up." Rocks detached from the battlements would have overwhelmed hosts, and a bold sally driven back armies. But the spirit of the Moors was subdued before their fastnesses. Yet they never ceased to regret what they had been unable to save; for, long after their expulsion, holy men among them would cross the straits, and, braving perils of sea and land, repair to the rocky tomb, near their ancient fortress, of a famous Sidi, and there, like the Jews of old, sit down and weep, remembering their former glories.

Cintra is as rich in historic associations as natural beauties. I visited the somber palace-my recollections, it may be, coloring my thoughts-where the BoyKing Sebastian gathered together the chivalry and boast of Portugal, to aid him in his gasconading expedition against the Moors of Africa, who avenged upon the bloody field of Alcazarquibir their own expulsion and insulted faith. The Christian banner went to the ground with the gallant nobles who sought to uphold it— and the king ne'er returned to meet his people's curse.*

* The fate of Sebastian is one of the many historical puzzles. His dead body was not found at the field of Alcazar, nor was he

THE PENA CONVENT.

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Old Joao de Castro's quinta I saw-that half-mad old viceroy of Goa-what time Portugal held an empire in the Indies, on either hemisphere, and made its name feared from the rising to the setting sun. The stones that stand before the portal of his quinta are crumbling into dust-the inscription so deeply graven upon them is fading away, but his name and the deeds he accomplished will remain in his country's history forever. And not far off is seen all that remains of the dilapidated structure of "England's wealthiest son"the owner of Font-Hill, and the author of " Vathek”— whose life illustrated the wide difference between wisdom of conduct and of speech.

And whoever wishes to embrace within the circuit of the eye an unmatched panorama, let him ascend the summit of the Pena Convent and look around him. In one direction, some three leagues distant, lies the broad Atlantic, with intermediate plain and meadow,

taken prisoner there. Some writers contend that he afterward appeared in Venice, and maintaining his identity, claimed the protection of that Republic-that while there he was seized by the Spaniards-conveyed to Naples, of which they had possession, and thence to Spain, where he died in prison. As Philip II. of Spain had conquered Portugal, it was for his interest to keep the secret of Sebastian's existence inviolate-and the exhibition of his dead body to the people of Lisbon was a mere state trick, got up to deceive the Portuguese with the belief of the extinction of their own royal line.

So Scottish authors assert that James did not fall on the fatal field of Flodden-but made long pilgrimages to other lands till his death-not wishing to reappear in a land his rashness had brought to the brink of destruction.

There, too, is the French story of the Masque de Fer, or Iron Mask-which with the preceding and many others serve to relieve the sometimes austere character of history. Their solution, whatever it may be, can not, fortunately, affect the interests of the present day.

undulating like the sea itself; and turning somewhat to the left, you behold the entrance to the Tagus with the opposed castles and rotatory lights; Belem structure, and San Jeronylmo Convent; the canvas of commerce enlivening the river, and the white houses its shores. On another side Mafra* gives to the eye

*Kinsey in his "Portugal Illustrated" thus speaks of it: "The extent of this noble structure is prodigious. It contains at once a palace, a convent, and a church of imposing magnitude, and it is proudly termed the 'Escurial of Portugal.' Mafra is about twenty miles north of Lisbon, and is surrounded by a bleak and solitary country, within view of the sea. It was considered a place of great strength in the time of the Moors, who built a fortress here, of which, however, no vestiges are discoverable at the present day. On this spot Joao V-who surrendered himself to a corrupt nobility, an intriguing and artful priesthood, and women of bad character-not contented with the vain display of having elevated the church of Lisbon into a patriarchate, to vie with that of St. Peter's at Rome, employed his troops in the erection of an edifice that was to eclipse by its splendor and magnificence the glories of the Spanish Escurial. Its construction was confided to a foreign architect; its embellishments were completed by Dutch, French, and Italian artists; and the splendid vestments in silk for the service of the priests were manufactured at Lyons. The marbles which resemble wood with work inlaid, are principally the production of the mountain overlooking Cintra, and of the celebrated quarry of Puo Pinheiro. The six colossal columns in red marble, of one single block, which decorate the three chief altars of the church, and the large pannels of marble, perfectly black, which adorn the lower part of the side walls, justly challenge the admiration of travelers. The six organs in the chapel are extremely handsome, and their tones perfectly correspond with the richness of their exterior ornaments. The plan of this edifice forms a quadrangle, measuring from east to west seven hundred and sixty feet, and from north to south six hundred and seventy feet. In the center of the west front is a sort of an Ionic hexastyle portico, which leads to the church; at each side is a pavilion, one for the accom modation of the royal family, the other for the patriarch and