I Determined To Commence My Researches At Some Slight Distance From Lisbon, Being Well Aware Of The Erroneous Ideas That I Must Form Of The Portuguese In General, Should I Judge Of Their Character And Opinions From What I Saw And Heard In A City So Much Subjected To Foreign Intercourse.

My first excursion was to Cintra.

If there be any place in the world entitled to the appellation of an enchanted region, it is surely Cintra; Tivoli is a beautiful and picturesque place, but it quickly fades from the mind of those who have seen the Portuguese Paradise. When speaking of Cintra, it must not for a moment be supposed that nothing more is meant than the little town or city; by Cintra must be understood the entire region, town, palace, quintas, forests, crags, Moorish ruin, which suddenly burst on the view on rounding the side of a bleak, savage, and sterile-looking mountain. Nothing is more sullen and uninviting than the south- western aspect of the stony wall which, on the side of Lisbon, seems to shield Cintra from the eye of the world, but the other side is a mingled scene of fairy beauty, artificial elegance, savage grandeur, domes, turrets, enormous trees, flowers and waterfalls, such as is met with nowhere else beneath the sun. Oh! there are strange and wonderful objects at Cintra, and strange and wonderful recollections attached to them. The ruin on that lofty peak, and which covers part of the side of that precipitous steep, was once the principal stronghold of the Lusitanian Moors, and thither, long after they had disappeared, at a particular moon of every year, were wont to repair wild santons of Maugrabie, to pray at the tomb of a famous Sidi, who slumbers amongst the rocks.

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