their admirers in this way, the gallant | The parks glitter with gas jets, and nupropping up the wall of the opposite merous bands vie with each other in crehouse, and rapturously regarding the ob- ating a crash of sound. The senhoras deject of his devotion from a distance. The scend from their watch-towers, and are guitar is sometimes used as a means of seen at the public gardens and the thecommunication, but more often the only atres in resplendent Parisian costumes. conversation is that of the eye. The Por- There is no distinctive national peculiarity in their dress. Snowy hats and bonnets | with softly curling plumes replace the veil of Spain. We might fancy ourselves in New York, or London, or Paris. Now and then we may meet a lady dressed entirely in purple, in fulfillment of a vow to the Virgin to wear her color for a certain length of time. When this is the case, fan, stockings, parasol, and even shoes are all of the same violet hue. The gentlemen are as a rule handsome, elegant in manners and attire, and remarkably youthful in appearance. Father and son, as they saunter arm in arm, are scarcely to be distinguished. Even Time is lazy in Portugal, and does his work in a slipshod way, quite forgetting the vindictive earnestness with which in our own country he polishes bald crowns and chisels wrinkles. Portuguese gentlemen even when on foot have a cavalier appearance. They delight in enormous spurs, and wear them perhaps when they not only do not own, but rarely mount, a horse. But Lisbon is devout as well as gay: witness her numerous churches and noble charities. Her most spectacular processions are religious, her bull-fights take place on the Campo of Santa Anna, and the gate money is divided with the Santa Casa de Misericordia. The lottery tickets, which are offered in such profusion upon the street, help support the Foundling Hospital, and even Satan is obliged to pay a high license to the Church for the privilege of doing what little mischief he can. The cathedral of Lisbon is not more remarkable than many of the rich parochial churches of the city. The church of Belem in architectural richness and historical importance is immeasurably its superior; the cathedral has only the prestige of name. Its most noticeable decoration is the conspicuous and ugly tiling which faces the walls of the interior with grotesque allegorical subjects. One of the most popular and fortunate of Lisbon churches is that of São Roque. His Majesty Dom João V. attended mass here upon one occasion, and noticing that all the chapels with the exception of that of St. John the Baptist were brilliantly lighted, inquired the reason of the slight. He was informed that all of the other saints had guilds devoted to the observance of their festival days, while the Baptist was not a favorite. The sovereign determined to himself become the special adherent of St. John of São Roque. He ordered a chapel to be built in Rome which should be a wonder of precious stones-lapis lazuli, amethyst, Egyptian alabasters, verd-antique, porphyry, and ancient jaul. Panels of Carrara marble, carved in the tasteless, overornamented style of the first part of the eighteenth mass was said in it by Pope Benedict XIV. century, decorate the ceiling. Two im- It was then taken to pieces, and sent to mense silver candelabra, intricately mod- Portugal, the whole expense amounting elled and gilded, and so heavy that four to a million dollars. men are GRAND DOORWAY OF THE CHURCH AND MONASTERY OF SÃO JERONYMO, BELEM. required to lift them, hold the consecrated tapers. Over the altars hang three really fine mosaics, copies of Guido's Annunciation," Raphael's "Descent of the Holy Ghost," and of the "Baptism of Christ" by Michael Angelo. The chapel temporarily set up at Rome, where was The church and monastery of São Jeronymo at Belem, the western suburb of Lisbon, is one of the most interesting buildings in Portugal. Four hundred years ago there stood upon this spot a little chapel, used by mariners, and devoted to Maria, Star of the Sea. Here, in 1497, Vasco da Gama passed the entire night in prayer, before setting out upon his perilous two years' voyage of enterprise and endurance. The same spot witnessed his return, laden with the wealth of the Indies, having accomplished an exploit in navigation (the passage to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope) to which the discovery of America was comparatively a pleasure-trip. King Manuel devoted the first gold brought from India to the erection of the church and monastery of Belem, and the noble pile forms a most fitting memorial of the great explorer. Camoens, the greatest of Portuguese poets, sang the fame of Vasco da Gama so well that he became himself famous; and if King Manuel's abbey is a poem in stone, Camoens's great epic is a monument more enduring than marble. The ashes of poet and hero have recently been laid in one of the chapels of this beautiful church, and the ceremonies upon this occasion were of a most imposing and splendid character. The poor unappreciative dust was borne by a royal galley down the Tagus, the men-of-war and merchant ships making a lane down which it passed, while flags dipped and cannon roar ed. Royalty stood upon the church steps to receive and do it honor, while an em TOWER OF BELEM. blematic procession, organized by the press, and taken part in by thousands of citizens, paraded the city, with monumental cars representative of the Army, the Navy, the Arts, Agriculture, Literature, etc. Perhaps if the deserted and dying Camoens could have foreseen this tardy recognition, he would not have poured out the bitterness of his soul in his tenth canzoni. "The land I loved above all lands on earth As the fierce waves drive o'er it tempest-torn, We passed under the florid platteresque doorway, with its prodigality of niched and canopied statues, and stood in the imposing interior. Tall, richly wrought columns shoot upward, supporting the vaulted roof, which is so delicately groined that the immense mass of stone has all the apparent lightness and feathery spring of the reticulation of a palm leaf. The architect of the building was severely criticised for the asserted instability of the structure, the critics of the day confidently asserting that the roof would fall in as soon as the scaffolding was removed. Even the architect himself had his fears, for he fled to France before the experiment was tried. The king appointed the task of removing the supports to condemned criminals, promising them a free pardon if they survived the result. The scaffolding was taken down, and was used by the liberated felons for the construction of houses for themselves; for, contrary to all expectation, the roof rested securely upon its slender piers, and the storms of four centuries and the shock of more than one earthquake have not thrown it from its delicate poise. To the right of the nave is the chapel of St. Raphael, which contains the sarcophagi of Camoens and Da Gama. Between them heads for even less celebrated vessels, stands a third, supported by elephants there was none which quite filled the recarved in black marble, and purporting to quirements of an effigy of St. Raphael. contain the remains of Dom Sebastian the | There were two candelabra, however, Regretted, who disappeared at the battle of Alcazar Kebir in Africa. The chapel is named from a wooden image of the archangel Raphael, taken from the prow of the ship in which Da Gama made his first voyage to the Indies, which is supposed to be still kept here; but though we found a number of wooden images sufficiently hideous to have served for figure carved and painted to represent lions, as large as Newfoundland dogs, and standing inSpeak, sir!" attitudes. They held the huge tapers in their fore-paws, and were altogether of such preternatural ugliness that one might well imagine them to have been stolen from some Hindoo temple by Vasco da Gama himself. As St. Jerome is the patron of the monastery, the lion, |