On My Saying,
However, That I Thought The Affairs Of Don Carlos Were On The
Decline (This Was Shortly After The Death Of Zumalacarregui), He
Frowned, And Cried That It Could Not Possibly Be, For That God Was
Too Just To Suffer It.
I felt for the poor man who had been driven
out of his home in the noble convent close by, and from a state of
affluence and comfort reduced in his old age to indigence and
misery, for his present dwelling scarcely seemed to contain an
article of furniture.
I tried twice or thrice to induce him to
converse about the school, but he either avoided the subject or
said shortly that he knew nothing about it. On my leaving him, the
boy came from his hiding-place and rejoined me; he said that he had
hidden himself through fear of his master's knowing that he had
brought me to him, for that he was unwilling that any stranger
should know that he was a schoolmaster.
I asked the boy whether he or his parents were acquainted with the
Scripture and ever read it; he did not, however, seem to understand
me. I must here observe that the boy was fifteen years of age,
that he was in many respects very intelligent, and had some
knowledge of the Latin language; nevertheless he knew not the
Scripture even by name, and I have no doubt, from what I
subsequently observed, that at least two-thirds of his countrymen
are on that important point no wiser than himself. At the doors of
village inns, at the hearths of the rustics, in the fields where
they labour, at the stone fountains by the wayside where they water
their cattle, I have questioned the lower class of the children of
Portugal about the Scripture, the Bible, the Old and New Testament,
and in no one instance have they known what I was alluding to, or
could return me a rational answer, though on all other matters
their replies were sensible enough; indeed, nothing surprised me
more than the free and unembarrassed manner in which the Portuguese
peasantry sustain a conversation, and the purity of the language in
which they express their thoughts, and yet few of them can read or
write; whereas the peasantry of England, whose education is in
general much superior, are in their conversation coarse and dull
almost to brutality, and absurdly ungrammatical in their language,
though the English tongue is upon the whole more simple in its
structure than the Portuguese.
On my return to Lisbon I found our friend -, who received me very
kindly. The next ten days were exceedingly rainy, which prevented
me from making any excursions into the country: during this time I
saw our friend frequently, and had long conversations with him
concerning the best means of distributing the gospel. He thought
we could do no better for the present than put part of our stock
into the hands of the booksellers of Lisbon, and at the same time
employ colporteurs to hawk the books about the streets, receiving a
certain profit off every copy they sold.
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