256

TRAVELLING IN PORTUGAL.

commonly got what was necessary. Tea and eggs and wine were always attainable—this last, a red wine, is the best Vin du Pays that I have tasted; and infinitely more palatable than the trash which they gave us as port, at Cintra and Lisbon.

We suffered less from our beds than we had feared they were clean; and I think we commonly had them all to ourselves.

In Portugal, as in almost every other part of the continent, you see few new houses; on the contrary, every town or village bears the symptoms of decay or abandonment. The solidity of the structure even of the meanest cabin contributes partly to this effect. An English house or cottage if not repaired soon falls to pieces, but here, though the inhabitant goes, the walls will remain, and nothing less than an earthquake can effect their disrupture. It is wonderful how little of progressiveness is seen in other countries compared with the more than geometrical reproduction with which every kind of public prosperity has crowded on in England during the last half century. We hear of some large fortunes in Lisbon, but they seem for the most part to have sprung, like those of the French financiers, at the expence of the public. One of the largest is that of an individual who had the contract for supplying the army in the late war, and the tobacco monopoly appears to

have originated the wealth of more than one other of the great capitalists.

There was no post from Alcobaça or Batalha, though formerly one ran by Coimbra; and the worthy fathers at both places were desirous of getting what news they could from us. The fact, if it be true of other places of the same class, struck me as one of much political importance. In the diffusion of knowledge and communication of opinion, the post is an instrument almost as valuable as the press. Indeed the one is not of much use without the other; and to be systematic in his hostility to the illumination of his subjects, a despot, to use the modern phrase, should suppress both.

A steam boat plies between Lisbon and Villafranca; and another, I understand, in the summer, runs to Oporto. These are the only public conveyances of any kind, whether by land or water, which we could hear of in Portugal: there are neither diligences nor waggons, nor even post horses. All this seems dismal enough to an Englishman; and till he sees the fact, he can hardly understand how people can exist, and exist happily, in the privation of such indispensables.

I have little to add respecting the face of the country, beyond what was noted in passing

S

through it. The cultivation is so scanty as hardly to afford matter for remark. Olive grounds are frequent. We have always been surprised to find so few vineyards. Pombal, it is said, compelled the cultivator to root up the vines, and plant corn whereever the land was fit for it. If we saw more corn we should attribute the apparent rareness of the grape to the effect of this strange interference of disposition.

He was a fine, active, straight-forward tyrant, this Pombal; and in Portugal we every where meet with the traces of his reforms. Few of them survived himself. Violence, whether in the hands of a mob or a minister, can only pull down. In Pombal's case the very ferocity with which he enforced his projects of improvement created a reaction of feeling against him, which awaited only the moment of his fall to destroy all, however good, that owed its origin to a source so unpopular. The spectacle of this work of dilapidation must have given some pangs to the remaining years of the old man's life; and doubtless cost him more to bear than the paltry insult of removing his bust from the pedestal of the statue in the Terreiro do Paço. One hears dreadful stories of his despotism here; and yet they evidently look back to his administration with respect. It was the single inter

val in the modern history of Portugal when any thing of energy or system has characterised the government.

The princes of the house of Braganza have uniformly been a mild, well-meaning race, and personally much beloved by their subjects. Their government was probably the worst of Europe—a doting, drivelling despotism, uninformed by a single spark of vigour or understanding in itselfunchecked and undirected from without by public opinion; or any thing else; unless it were the monks, who, like the Janissaries of Constantinople, were always on the alert to stifle every germ of improvement. For a time Pombal waged a successful war with these people; but the accession of a weak, bigotted, half-witted woman to the throne,. naturally restored their proper ascendancy, which they preserved up to the time of the French invasion. Since then all interests and opinions have been in such a state of deplacement and struggle, that it is difficult to form an estimate of the real preponderance of any. However, we may be sure that this stirring of the elements will not have passed over in vain; things cannot return to their former state of stagnation and rottenness; and into whatever form or shape they may subside, the result can hardly be otherwise than for the better.

ROYAL FAMILY-CONSTITUTION-POLITICAL OPINIONS.

In a foreign country one always feels some curiosity about the royal family. That of Portugal is at present in a state of unusual depression. The king is dead, and it is as yet scarcely known who shall succeed him. Of his two sons, one is in Brazil the other in Germany; the queen is in retreat; and the burden of government has devolved on the eldest infanta, who, with her sisters, alone remains to inhabit the palaces of her fathers.

It is customary with the Kings of Portugal to hold a weekly court, in which the humblest of his subjects is admitted to approach and address the monarch. As yet no court of any kind has been held since the death of the late king. However we have seen the infantas twice-once in particular, very long and close, at a grand musical performance at the patriarchal church. They seem very charming young women-the eldest in particular, who, to a look and expression per