whose light hair and waxen complexion was finely contrasted by the ebon hue of two little negro attendants perched on each side of her. It is the high ton at present in this court to be surrounded by African implings, the more hideous the more prized, and to bedizen them in the most expensive manner. Queen has set the example, and the royal family vie with each other in spoiling and caressing Donna Rosa, her Majesty's blackskinned, blubber-lipped, flat-nosed favourite.

The

One of the ballets was admirably got up; upon the rising of the curtain, a strange cabalistic apartment is discovered, where an astrologer appears very busy at a table covered with spheres and astrolabes, arranging certain mysterious images, and pinking their eyes with a gigantic pair of black compasses. A sort of Pierrot announces some inquisitive travellers, who enter with many bows and scrapings. One of them, the chief of the party, an old dapper beau in pink and silver, reminded me very much of the Duke d'Alafoens, and sidled along and tossed his cane about, and seemed to ask questions without waiting for answers, with as good a grace as that janty general. The astrologer, after explaining the * wonders of his apartment with many pantomimical contortions, invites his company to follow him, and the scene changes to a long gallery, illuminated with a profusion of lights in gilt branches. The perspective ends in a flight of steps, upon each of which stands a row of figures, pantaloons, harlequins, sultans, sultanas, Indian chiefs, devils, and savages, to all appearance motionless. Pierrot brings in a machine like a hand-organ, and his master begins to grind, the music accompanying. At the first chord, down. drop the arms of all the figures; at the second, each rank descends a step, and so on, till gaining the level of the stage, and the astrologer grinding faster and faster, the supposed clockwork-assembly begin a general dance.

Their ballet ended, the same accords are repeated, and all hop up in the same stiff manner they hopped down. The travellers, highly pleased with the show, depart; Pierrot, who longs to be grinding, persuades his master to take a walk, and leave him in possession of the gallery. He consents; but enjoins the gaping oaf upon no account to meddle with the machine, or set the figures in motion. Vain are his directions! no sooner has he turned his

back than Pierrot goes to work with all his strength; the figures fall a shaking as if on the point of disjoining themselves; creak, crack grinds the machine with horrid harshness; legs, arms, and noddles are thrown into convulsions, three steps are jumped at once. Pierrot, frightened out of his senses at the goggle-eyed crowd advancing upon him, clings close to the machine and gives the handle no respite. The music, too, degenerates into the most jarring, screaking sounds, and the figures knocking against each other, and whirling round and round in utter confusion, fall flat upon the stage. Pierrot runs from group to group in rueful despair, tries in vain to reanimate them, and at length losing all patience, throws one over the other, and heaps sultanas upon savages, and shepherds upon devilkins. Most of these personages being represented by boys of twelve or thirteen were easily wielded. After Pierrot has finished tossing and tumbling, he drops down exhausted and lies as dead as his neighbours, hoping to escape unnoticed amongst them. But this subterfuge avails him not; in comes the astrologer armed with his compasses; back he starts at sight of the confounded jumble. Pierrot pays for it all, is soon drawn forth from his lurking-place, and the astrologer grinding in a moderate and scientific manner, the figures lift themselves up, and returning all in statu quo, the ballet finishes.

Shall I confess that this nonsense amused me pretty nearly as much as it did my companions, whose raptures were only exceeded by those of Madame de Pombeiro's implings. They, sweet, sooty innocents, kept gibbering and pointing at the man with the black compasses in a manner so completely African and ludicrous, that I thought their contortions the best part of the entertainment.

The play ended, we hastened back to the palace, and traversing a number of dark vestibules and guard-chambers, (all of a snore with jaded equerries,) were almost blinded with a blaze of light from the room in which supper was served up. There we found in addition to all the Marialvas, the old Marquis only excepted, the Camareira-Mor, and five or six other hags of supreme quality, feeding like cormorants upon a variety of high-coloured and highseasoned dishes. I suppose the keen air from the Tagus, which blows right into the palace-windows, operates as a powerful whet, for I never beheld eaters or eateresses, no not even our old ac

quaintance Madame la Présidente at Paris, lay about them with greater intrepidity. To be sure, it was a splendid repast, quite a banquet. We had manjar branco and manjar real, and among other good things a certain preparation of rice and chicken, which suited me exactly, and no wonder, for this excellent mess had been just tossed up by Donna Isabel de Castro with her own illus trious hands, in a nice little kitchen adjoining the Queen's apartment, in which all the utensils are of solid silver.

The number of lights upon the table, and of attendants and pages in rich uniforms around it, was prodigious; but what interested me far more than all this parade was the sportive good-humour and frankness of the company. How it happened that the presence of a stranger failed to inspire any reserve, is one of those odd circumstances I can hardly account for; especially as the higher orders of the Portuguese are the farthest removed of all persons from admitting any but their nearest relations to these family parties; but so it was, and I felt both flattered and gratified at being permitted to witness the ease and hilarity which prevailed.

The dutiful, affectionate attention of the younger part of the company to their parents was truly amiable; nor do I believe that, at this day in any other realm in Europe, the sacred precept of honouring your father and your mother is so cordially observed as in Portugal. Happy if, in our intercourse with that nation, we had profited in that respect by their example; the peace of so many of our noblest families would not have been disturbed by the lowest connexions, nor their best blood contaminated by matches of the most immoral, degrading tendency. We should not have seen one year a performer acting the part of a lady this or lady t'other upon the stage, and the next in the drawing-room; nor, upon entering some of our principal houses, have been tempted to cry out, *"Bless me! that lovely countenance is the same I recol

* About the period of the present King's accession, several ladies of this description had bounced into the peerage; but as they did not walk at the coronation, somebody observed, it was odd enough that the peeresses best accustomed to a free use of their limbs, declined stirring a step upon this occasion. Horace Walpole mentions this bon mot in some of his letters; I forget to whom he attributes it.

lect adoring by moonlight on the fine broad flagstones of Bond Street or Portland Place!"

It was now after two in the morning, and I must own, notwithstanding the good cheer of which I had participated and the kind entertainment I had received, I began to feel a little tired. The children were in such spirits, so full of frolic, and her sublimity, the Camareira-Mor so unusually tolerant and condescending, that there was no knowing when the party would break up. Taking, therefore, my leave in due form, I made my retreat, escorted by half-a-dozen torch-bearers.

Just as I had gotten about half-way on my journey through what appeared to me interminable passages, I was arrested in my progress by a pair of Dominicans, Father Rocha, and his scarecrow satellite Frè Josè do Rosario. A person less accustomed than I had lately been to such apparitions would have been startled; especially, too, if he had found himself like me between the most formidable living pillars of the holy inquisition.

"What are you doing here so very late," I could not help exclaiming, "my reverend fathers? What's the matter?"

"The matter is," answered Rocha, with a voice of terrific hoarseness, "that we have caught cold waiting for you in these confounded corridors. The Archbishop, above half-an-hour ago, commanded us to bring you to him dead or alive; but a rascally jackanapes in waiting upon her excellency the Camareira-Mor would not let us in to deliver our message, so we have been airing ourselves hitherto to no purpose."

"Do you know," said Rocha, taking me into a little room where a lamp was still burning, "that affairs do not go on so smoothly as they ought? The Archbishop seems to have lost both time and temper since he has been pressed into the cabinet; and, as for the Prince of Brazil and his consort, God forgive me for wishing their advisers and all their intrigues in the lowest abyss of perdition. How can you be scheming a journey to Madrid at this ? The floods are out, and the robbers also, and I tell you what, as the Archbishop says twenty times a day, if you do go you deserve to be drowned and murdered."

season

my chance;

but

"The die is cast," I replied, "and I must take really I wish you would have the goodness to bid the Archbishop

a very good night in my name, and let me put off asking his benediction till to-morrow, for I am quite jaded."

"Jaded or not," answered the monk, "you must come with me; the wind is up in the Archbishop's brain just at this moment, and by the least contradiction more would become a hurricane."

Finding resistance vain, I suffered myself to be conducted through two or three open courts, very refreshing at this hour you may suppose, and up a little staircase into the Archbishop's interior cabinet. All was still as death-no lay-brother bustling about-no sound audible but a low breathing, which now and then swelled into a half suppressed groan, from the agitated prelate, whom we found knee-deep in papers, immersed in thought. "So," said he, "there you are at last. What have you been doing all this while? Who but a brute of an Englishman would have kept me waiting. Ay, ay, you told me how it would be, and you are right. They plague my soul out. We have twenty rascals pulling as many ways. Your people too are not what they used to be, though Mello would make us believe to the contrary. One thing I know for certain, some infernal mischief is afloat, and unless God's grace is speedily manifested, I see no end to confusion, and wish myself anywhere but where I am. These smooth-tongued, Frenchified, Italian Voltaireists and encyclopedians have poisoned all sound doctrine. Ay," continued he rising up, with an expression of indignation and anger I never saw before on his countenance, "somebody's ears * are poisoned whom I could name But where is the use of talking to you? You are determined to leave us; be it so. God's providence is above all. He knows what is best for you, and for me, and for

* The personage in question paid dearly for having listened to evil counsellors and exciting the suspicions of the church. In about a twelve-month after this conversation, the small pox, not attended to so skilfully as it might have been, was suffered to carry him off, and reduced his imperious widow to a mere cipher in the politics of a court she had begun very successfully to agitate. To this period the cruel distress of the Queen's mind may be traced. The conflict between maternal tenderness and what she thought political duty, may be supposed with much greater probability to have produced her fatal derangement, than all the scruples respecting the Aveiro and Tavoura confiscations which the fanatical, interested priest, who succeeded my excellent friend, excited.