Old Bailey! What huge criticisms of Corneille and Voltaire would that little instrument supply! What volumes, founded on its movements, would it render superfluous! Even Grecian regularity must yield before it, and criticism triumph, by this invariable standard, at once over Sophocles and Shakspeare. The scenery was wretched-the singers tolerable-and the band excellent. The ballet took place between the acts of the opera, and was spun out to great length. The dancing consisted partly of wonderful twirlings of the French school, and partly of the more wonderful contortions of the Portuguese; both kinds exceedingly clever, but exhibiting very little of true beauty, grace, or elegance. At the close of the first act, a perfect shower of roses, pinks, and carnations, together with printed sonnets, was poured down from the top of the theatre in honour of his majesty, whose absence, however, even Portuguese loyalty cannot pardon. exhibit, and which are truly surprising. The be counted out like those of culprits at the Opera House, called the Theatre San Carlos, is, except on a few particular occasions, almost deserted. The audiences are usually so thin, that it is not usual to light up the body of the house, except on particular days, when the rare illumination is duly announced in the bills. I visited it fortunately on the birth-day of the king, which is one of the most splendid of its festivals. Its interior is not much smaller than that of Covent Garden Theatre, though it appears at the first glance much less, from the extreme beauty of the proportions. The form is that of an ellipse, exquisitely turned, intersected at the farther extremity by the stage. The sides are occupied by five tiers of boxes, at least in appearance, for the upper circles, which are appropriated to the populace by way of gallery, are externally uniform with the rest of the theatre. The prevailing colour is white; the ornaments between the boxes, consisting of harps and tasteful devices, are of brown and gold, and elegantly divided into compartments by rims of burnished gold. The The churches are the most remarkable of middle of the house is occupied by the grand the public buildings of Lisbon; though plain entrance into the pit, the royal box, and the on the outside, they are exceedingly splendid gallery above it, which is in continuation of in the interior. The tutelary saints are richer the higher circle. The royal box is from than many Continental princes, though their twelve to fifteen feet in length, and occupies treasures are only displayed to excite the rein height the space of three rows of the com- verence or the cupidity of the people on high mon boxes. Above are the crown and regal and festal occasions. The most beautiful, arms in burnished gold, and the sides are sup- though not the largest of the churches which I ported by statues of the same radiant appear- have examined, is that of the Estrella, which ance. Curtains of green silk, of a fine texture, is lined with finely-varied and highly-polished usually conceal its internal splendours; but on marble, vaulted over with a splendid and this occasion they were drawn aside at the sculptured roof, and adorned, in its gilded same moment that the stage was discovered, recesses, with beautiful pictures. Were it not, and displayed the interior illuminated with indeed, for the impression made on me by one great brilliancy. This seat of royalty is di- of the latter, I should scarcely have mentioned vided into two stories-a slight gallery being this edifice, unable as I am technically to dethrown over the back part of it. Its ground scribe it. The piece to which I allude is not, is a deep crimson; the top descends towards that I can discover, held in particular estimathe back in a beautiful concave, representing tion, or the production of any celebrated artist; a rich veil of ermine. In the front of the but it excited in me feelings of admiration and lower compartment, behind the seats, is the delight, which can never die away. It reprecrown of Portugal, figured on deep green vel- sents Saint John in the Isle of Patmos, gazing vet; and the sides are adorned with elegant on the vision in which the angels are pouring mirrors. The centre of the roof of the theatre forth the vials, and with the pen in his hand, is an ellipse, painted to represent the sky with ready to commit to sacred and imperishable the moon and stars visible; the sides sloping record the awful and mysterious scenes opened to the upper boxes are of white adorned with before him. Never did I behold or imagine gold and crimson. The stage is supported on such a figure. He is sitting, half entranced each side by two pillars of the composite order, with wonder at the revelation disclosed to of white and gold, half in relief, with a brazen him, half mournfully conscious of the evils statue between each of them. It forms an which he is darkly to predict to a fated and excellent framework for a dramatic picture. unheeding world. The face, in its mere form The most singular feature of the house is a and colouring, is most beautiful: its features clock over the centre of the stage, which regu- are perfectly lovely, though inclining rather to larly strikes the hours, without mercy. What cherubic roundness than Grecian austerity, a noble invention this for the use of those who and its roseate bloom of youth is gently touchcontend for the unity of time! How nicely ed and softened by the feelings attendant on would it enable the French critics to estimate the sad and holy vocation of the beloved disthe value of a tragedy at a single glance! ciple. The head is bent forward, in eagerHow accurately might the time be measured ness, anxiety, and reverence; the eyebrows out in which eternal attachments should be arched in wonder, yet bearing in every line formed, conspiracies planned, and states over- some undefinable expression of pity; the eyes thrown; how might the passions of the soul are uplifted, and beaming with holy inspirabe regulated to a minute, and the rise and tion, yet mild, soft, angelical; around the exswell of the great emotions of the heart deter-quisitely-formed mouth, sweet tenderness for mined to a hair; with what accuracy might the inevitable sorrows of mankind are playing; the moments which the heroes have yet to live and the bright chestnut hair, falling in masses over the shoulders, gives to all this expression | learn only to feel our weakness. But in the of high yet soft emotion, a finishing grace and sacred place where all that could perish of our completeness. This figure displays such un-orators, philosophers, and poets, is reposing, we speakable sweetness tempering such prophetic feel our mortality only to lend us a stronger fire; such religious and saintly purity, mingled and more ethereal sense of our eternal being. with so genial a compassion; it is at once so Life and death seem met together, as in a holy individual and so ideal; so bordering on the fane, in peaceful concord. While we feel that celestial, and yet so perfectly within the range the mightiest must yield to the stern law of of human sympathies; that it is difficult to necessity, we know that the very monuments say, whether the delicious emotions which it which record the decay of their outward inspires partake most of wonder or of love. frame, are so many proofs and symbols that The image seemed, like sweet music, to sink they shall never really expire. We feel that into the soul, there to remain for ever. To see those whose remembrance is thus extended such a piece is really to be made better and beyond the desolating power of the grave, happier. The recollection is a precious trea-over whose fame death and mortal accidents sure for the feelings and the imagination, of which nothing, while they endure, can deprive them. have no power, are not themselves destroyed. And when we recollect the more indestructible monuments of their genius, those works, which live not only in the libraries of the studious, but in the hearts and imaginations of men; we are conscious at once, that the spirit which conceived, and the souls which appreciate and love them, are not of the earth, earthy. Our thoughts are not wholly of humiliation and sorrow! but stretch forward, with a pensive majesty, into the permanent and the immortal. The church at Belem, a fortified place on the Tagus, three or four miles from Lisbon, where the kings and royal family of Portugal have, for many generations, been interred, must not be forgotten. It is one of the most ancient buildings in the kingdom, having originally been erected by the Romans, and splendidly adorned by the Moorish sovereigns. Formed of white stone, it is now stained to a reddish brown by the mere influence of years, Having inspected the city, I was naturally and frowns over the water "cased in the un- anxious to visit the celebrated Aqueduct, which feeling armour of old time." Its shape is is carried across a deep valley two or three oblong, its sides of gigantic proportions, and miles from Lisbon. Having passed the suits massive appearance most grand and awe- burbs, and reached the open country, I saw, at inspiring. The principal entrance is by a sudden turn in the pathway, the mighty obdeep archway, reaching to a great height, and ject of my wanderings. I found myself on the circular within, ornamented above and around summit of a gently sloping declivity, at a little with the most crowded, venerable, and yet distance from the foot of which a hill rose to fantastic devices-martyrs and heroes of chi- an equal height, with a bold and luxuriant sweep. valry-swords and crosiers-monarchs and It is across the expanse thus formed, that the saints-crosses and sceptres-"the roses and stupendous bridge runs, in two straight lines flowers of kings" and the sad emblems of from each eminence, which form an obtuse mortality-all wearing the stamp of deep anti-angle in the centre. The whole is supported quity, all appearing carved out of one eternal by thirty-six arches, which, as the ground from rock, and promising by their air of solid each extremity sinks, increase in height, or grandeur to survive as many stupendous rather depth, till in the middle of the pile, the changes as those which have already left them distance to which they ascend from the vale is unshaken. The interior of this venerable fearful. This huge structure is composed of edifice is not less awe-breathing or substantial. dark gray stone, the deep colour of which gives Eight huge pillars of barbaric architecture, to its massiveness an air of the sternest granand covered all over with strange figures and deur. The water is conveyed across the level grotesque ornaments in relievo, support the thus formed, through a chain of building which roof, which is white, ponderous, and of a noble occupies its centre, and appears almost like a simplicity, being only divided into vast square line of solid and unbroken rock. Above this compartments by the beams which cross it. erection, turrets of still greater height, and of Such a pile, devoted to form the last resting- the same materials, are reared at regular inplace of a line of kings who have, each in his tervals, and crown the whole. The road is brief span of time, held the fate of millions at thus divided into two passes, which are sehis pleasure, cannot fail to excite solemn and cured by high ridges of stone, in the long, unpensive thought. And yet what are the feel-interrupted straight lines, which have an air ings thus excited, to those meditations to of so awful a grandeur in the noblest remains which the great repository of the illustrious deceased in England invites us! Here we think of nothing but the perishableness of man in his best estate-the emptiness of human honours the low and frail nature of all the distinctions of earth. A race of monarchs occupy but a narrow vault: they were kings, and now are dust; and this idea forced home upon us, makes us feel that the most potent and enduring of worldly things-thrones, dynasties, and the peaceable succession of high families are but as feeble shadows. We of Roman art. The view from the southern road, though romantic, is, for the most part, confined within narrow boundaries, as rugged hills arise on this side almost from the foot of the Aqueduct, to a height far above its towers, cultivated only towards the lower parts, and covered on the loftier spots with a thin grass and shapeless blocks or masses of granite. This mountainous ridge breaks, however, in the centre, and abruptly displays a piece of the Tagus, like an inland lake, with its tenderly rimpled blue, and the wild and lofty banks which rise precipitously beyond it. As the sun was declining when I traversed this path, the portion of craggy shore thus disclosed, and the shrubs which flourish among its steeps, were overcast with the richest tints from the west, and the vessels gently gliding through the opening made by the shaggy declivities of the nearer hills, completed the feeling of genial composure diffused over the scene. From the northern side, the prospect appears arrayed in far gayer charms. The valley here, from the narrow point at which it is seen, spreads out into a fanlike form, till the eminences on each side seem gradually to melt away, and the open country lies in full expanse to the view. It is a scene of fresh, reposing, and perfect beauty. Not an angular intersection breaks the roundness, or interrupts the grace, which characterize the whole. The hills in the foreground sink from each side of the Aqueduct, gradually to the depth of the vale, covered with the freshest verdure, fluctuating in a wave-like motion; and the more distant landscape appears composed of a thousand gentle undulations, thrown up by Nature in her sweetest mood, as though the earth were swelling with an exuberant bounty, even to the rim of the circling sky, with the form of which all is harmonious. The green in which the prospect is clothed, is of a softer and more vivid hue than in England; the pastures seem absolutely to sparkle on the eye; and, amidst this "splendour in the grass, this glory in the flower," the lively groves of orange and the villas of purest white scattered thickly around, give to the picture a fairy brightness. And yet, setting individual associations aside, I prefer the scenery of my own country to this enchanted vale. This is a landscape to visit as a spectacle, not to live in. There is no solemnity about it,-no austere beauty, no retiring loveliness; there are no grand masses of shade, no venerable oaks, which seem coeval with the hills over which they cast their shadows,-no vast colonnades, in which the fine spirit of the elder time seems yet to keep its state. Nature wears not the pale livery which inspires meditation or solemn joy; her face seems wreathed in a perpetual smile. The landscape breathes, indeed, of intoxicating delight; it invites to present joy; but it leads to no tender reminiscences of the past, nor gives solemn indications of the future. It is otherwise in the very deficiencies, as they are usually regarded, of our happier land. There" the pale primrose that dies unmarried" among the scanty hedge-rows, as an emblem of innocence peeping forth amidst a cheerless world, suggests more pensive yet delicious musing, than the gaudiest productions of this brighter clime. The wild roses, thinly interspersed among our thickets, with their delicate colouring and faint perfume, afford images of rustic modesty, far sweeter and more genial than the rich garlands which cluster here. Those "echoes from beyond the grave," which come to us amid the stillness of forests which have outlived generations of men, are here unheard. In these valleys we are dazzled, surprised, enchanted ;-in ours we are moved with solemn yet pleasing thoughts, which “do often lie too deep for tears." Having traversed both sides of the aqueduct, I resolved to ascend one of the hills beyond it, for the purpose of obtaining a still more extensive view. After a most weary ascent, of which my eye had taken a very inadequate estimate, I reached the summit and was amply rewarded for my toils. To the north lay the prospect which I have endeavoured to describe, softened in the distance; beneath was the huge pile, with its massive arches and lone turrets bridging the vale. To the south was the Tagus, and, a little onward, its entrance, where it gently blended with the sea. Completely round the north-eastern side of the horizon, the same mighty and beautiful river appeared flowing on far beyond Lisbon in a noble curve, which seemed to dissolve in the lighter blue of the heavens. And full to the west beyond the coast of Portugal, now irradiated with the most brilliant colouring, was the free and circling ocean, on which amidst visionary shapes of orange and saffron glory, the sun was, for his last moment, resting. Soon the sky became literally "fretted with golden fire," and the hills seemed covered with a tender haze of light, which rendered them yet lovelier. The moon began to blend her mild radiance with the sweet twilight, as I took the last glance at the vale, and hastened to Lisbon. On Thursday, the 21st of May, a grand festival was holden in honour of Saint George, who is held in peculiar reverence in Lisbon. On this most sacred occasion, all the buildings around the vast area of the Rocio were hung with crimson tapestry; a road was formed of fine gravel, guarded by lines of soldiers; and the troops, to a great number, in splendid uniforms, occupied the most conspicuous passages. When all was prepared, the train issued from a church in one of the angles of the square, and slowly paraded round the path prepared for it. It consisted of all the ecclesiastical orders, attired in their richest vestments, and bearing, alternately, crosses of gold and silver; canopies of white, purple, orange, and crimson silk, bordered with deep fringes; and gorgeous banners, decorated with curious devices. The canopy which floated over the consecrated wafer, formerly borne by the king and the princes, was, on this occasion, carried by the chief persons of the regency. But the most remarkable object was the Saint himself, who," not to speak it profanely," is no other than a wooden figure, and, I am afraid, must yield in proportion and in grace to that unconsecrated work, the Apollo Belvidere. He was seated on a noble horse, and arrayed in a profusion of gems, which, according to the accounts of the Portuguese, human power could hardly calculate. His boots were of solid silver; his whole person begirt with jewels, and his hat glittered in the sun like one prodigious diamond. He descended in state from the castle to the church, whence the procession issued, and remained there during the solemnities. He was saluted on leaving his mansion, with a discharge of artillery, and re ceived the same compliment on his return to that favoured residence. The people, who were of course assembled in great crowds, did not appear to me to look on the magnificent display before them with any feeling of religious awe, or to regard it in any other light than, at the most, a national spectacle. Of the national character of the Portuguese in general, I can say very little, as my personal intercourse with them was extremely limited. Were I to believe all that some English residents in Lisbon have told me, I should draw a gloomy picture of human degradation unrelieved by a single redeeming grace. I should say that the common people are not only ignorant and filthy, but universally dishonest; that they blend the vices of savage and social life, and are ready to become either pilferers or assassins; that they are cruel to their children, lax in friendship, and implacable in revenge; that the higher orders are at once the dupes and tyrants of their servants, familiar with them one moment, and brutally despotic the next; that they are in onstant jealousy of their wives, and not without reason; and that even their vices are without dignity or decorum. All this can never be true, or Lisbon would not be subsisting in order and peace. To me, the inhabitants appear in a more amiable light. Filthy and ignorant the common people doubtless are; but they are sober; and those dreadful excesses and sorrows which arise from the use, in England, of ardent spirits, are consequently unknown. They are idle; but the warmth of the climate may, in some degree, excuse them. No rank is destitute of some appearance of native courteousness. The rich are not, indeed, Howards or Clarksons; they have no idea of exerting themselves to any great degree, to draw down blessings on the heads of others or their own; they do not go in search of wretchedness in order to remove it, but when misery is brought before them, as it is constantly here, in a thousand ghastly forms, they are far from withholding such aid as money can render. The gardens of their country villas, which are exceedingly elegant, are always open in the evenings to any of the populace who choose to walk there, so that the citizen, on the numerous holidays which the Romish church affords, is not compelled to inhale the dust in some wretched tea-garden, which is a libel at once on nature and art, but may rove with his children through groves of orange and thickets of roses. When the company thus indulged meet any of the family which reside in the mansion, they acknowledge the favour which they are enjoying by obeisances not ungracefully made, which are always returned with equal courtesy. I am assured, that this privilege is never abused; even the children walk amidst the flowers and the fruits, without the slightest idea of touching them. This circumstance alone would induce me to doubt the justice with which some have attempted to fix the brand of dishonesty on the inferior classes of Portugal. The people want not the natural tenderness and gentle movements of the heart; all their deficiencies arise from the absence of high principle, the languishing of intellect, and the decay of the loftier powers and energies which dignify man. They have no enthusiasm, no devoted admiration, or love, for objects unconnected with the necessities of their mortal being, or the low gratifications of sense. They have a few mighty names to lend them an inspiration, which might supply the place of contemporary genius; and with those, of which they ought to be fond in proportion to their rarity, they appear scarcely acquainted. Of the rich stores of poetry and romance, which they might enjoy from the neighbouring country and almost similar language of Spain, they are, for the most part, unconscious. Not only has the spirit of chivalry departed from these mountains, where it once was glowing; but its marvellous and golden tales are neglected or forgotten. The degradation of the public mind in Lisbon is increased by the notorious venality of the ministers of justice. There is no crime for which indemnity may not be purchased by a bribe. Even offences against the government of the king may be winked at, if the culprit is able to make an ample pecuniary sacrifice. It is a well-known fact that some of the chief conspirators in the plot to assassinate Marshal Beresford, and change the whole order of things in Portugal, were able to make their peace with the judges, and, on the ground of some technical informality, were dismissed without trial. When any one is accused of an offence, he is generally sent at once to prison, where he remains until he can purchase his freedom. There does not seem, however, any disposition to persecution for opinions, or to exercise wanton cruelty. The Inquisition is no longer an engine in the hands of the priests, but is merely a tribunal for the examination and the punishment of political offences. Death is rarely inflicted; for it brings no gain to the magistrate. Criminals guilty of the highest offences are kept in prison until they are forgotten, without any one knowing or caring about their fate. In the absence of the sovereign almost all the civil authorities have become totally corrupted, for there is no patriot to watch, and no public voice to awe them. The people appear sunk in apathy to all excepting gain; and the greater number of them crawl on with little hope, except to supply the cravings of hunger. The city, notwithstanding its populousness, exhibits all the marks of decay-buildings in ruins amidst its stateliest streets, and houses begun on a magnificent scale, and left unfinished for years. The foreign merchants, especially the British, who use it as a central port, give it an artificial life, without which its condition would be most wretched. In bidding farewell to this bright abode of degraded humanity, I felt it impossible to believe that it was destined gradually to become desolate and voiceless. Glorious indeed would be the change, if knowledge should expand the souls now so low and contracted, into a sympathy with the natural wonders around them-if the arts should once more adorn the romantic city-and the orange groves and lovely spots among the delicate cork trees, should be vocal with the innocent gayety of happy peasants, or shed their influences on the hearts of youthful bards. If, indeed, the people were awakened into energy, and their spirit was regulated by wise and beneficent governors, the capital of Portugal would assuredly become the fairest of cities. 66 MR. CHARLES LLOYD'S POEMS.* [LONDON MAGAZINE.] existence, instead of discovering the spirit of truth and beauty within them. Nor does the author before us, often combined with these by the ignorance or e artifice of criticism, differ less widely from them. Without Wordsworth's intuitive perception of the profoundest truths, or Coleridge's feeling of beauty, he has a subtile activity of mind which supplies the place of the first, and a wonderful power of minute observation, which, when directed to lovely objects, in a great degree produces the effect of the latter. All these three rise on some occasions to the highest heaven of thought and feeling, though by various processesWordsworth reaching it at once by the divine wingedness of his genius-Coleridge ascending to it by a spiral track of glory winding on through many a circuit of celestial light-and Lloyd stepping thither by a firm ladder, like that of Jacob, by even steps, which the feet of angels have trodden! The peculiar qualities of Mr. Lloyd's genius have never been so clearly developed as in the chief poem of the work before us. In his THERE is no more remarkable instance of the ciates-offering a child-like feebleness in con"cant of criticism," than the representation trast to Wordsworth's nerve-and ranging currently received as distinctive, whereby through mythologies and strange fantasies, not several authors, chiefly residing in the neigh-only with less dominion than Coleridge, but bourhood of the lakes, were characterized merely portraying the shapes to which they gave as belonging to one school of poetry. In truth, propinquity of residence, and the bonds of private friendship, are the only circumstances which have ever given the slightest colour to the hypothesis which marked them out as disciples of the same creed. It is scarcely possible to conceive individuals more dissimilar in the objects of their choice, or in the essential properties of their genius. Who, for example, can have less in common than Wordsworth and Coleridge, if we except those faculties which are necessarily the portion of the highest order of imaginative minds? The former of these has sought for his subjects among the most ordinary occurrences of life, which he has dignified and exalted, from which he has extracted the holiest essences of good, or over which he has cast a consecrating and harmonizing light which never was by sea or land." The latter, on the other hand, has spread abroad his mighty mind, searching for his materials through all history and all science, penetrating into the hidden soul of the wildest superstitions, and selecting the richest spoils of time from the remotest ages. Wordsworth is all intensity-he sees nothing, but through the hallowing medium of his own soul, and represents all things calm, silent, and harmonious as his own perceptions. Coleridge throws himself into all the various objects which he contemplates, and attracts to his own imagery their colours and forms. The first, seizes only the mighty and the true with a giant grasp;-the last has a passionate and almost effeminate love of beauty and tenderness which he never loses. One looks only on the affections in their inmost home, while the other perceives them in the lightest and remotest tints, which they cast on objects the strangest and most barbarous. All the distinc-tual power was less conspicuous than in his tion, in short, between the intense and the ex- last poems, because the personal emotion was pansive the severe and the lovely-the phi- more intense, single, and pervading. He is losophic and the magical-really separates these now, we rejoice to observe, more "i' the sun," great poets, whom it has been the fashion to cen- and consequently, the nice workings of his sure as united in one heresy. If we cast the reason are set more distinctly before us. The slightest glance at Southey's productions, we Desultory Thoughts in London" embrace a shall find him unlike either of these, his asso-great variety of topics, associated in the mind of the author with the metropolis, but many of them belonging to those classes of abstraction which might as fitly be contemplated in a *Desultory Thoughts in London, Titus and Gisippus, with other Poems. By CHARLES LLOYD, author of Nuga Canora, and translator of Alfieri's Tragedies, 12mo, 1821. 66 Nuga Canoræ," all his thoughts and feelings were overcast by a gentle melancholy, which rendered their prominences less distinct, as it shed over them one sad and sober hue. Even, however, in his most pensive moods, the vigorous and restless activity of his intellect might be discerned, curiously inquiring for the secret springs of its own distress, and regarding its sorrows as high problems worthy of the most painful scrutiny. While he exhibited to us the full and pensive stream of emotion, with all the images of soft clouds and delicate foliage reflected on its bosom, he failed not to conduct us to its deep-seated fountains, or to lay open to our view the jagged caverns within its banks. Yet here the vast intellec 66 |