The Little Shops Were At Full Work -
The Men Brown, Well-Dressed, Manly, And Handsome:
So much cannot,
I am sorry to say, be said for the ladies, of whom, with every
anxiety to do so, our party could not perceive a single good-
looking specimen all day.
The noble blue Tagus accompanies you all
along these three miles of busy pleasant street, whereof the chief
charm, as I thought, was its look of genuine business - that
appearance of comfort which the cleverest Court-architect never
knows how to give.
The carriages (the canvas one with four seats and the chaise in
which I drove) were brought suddenly up to a gate with the Royal
arms over it; and here we were introduced to as queer an exhibition
as the eye has often looked on. This was the state-carriage house,
where there is a museum of huge old tumble-down gilded coaches of
the last century, lying here, mouldy and dark, in a sort of limbo.
The gold has vanished from the great lumbering old wheels and
panels; the velvets are wofully tarnished. When one thinks of the
patches and powder that have simpered out of those plate-glass
windows - the mitred bishops, the big-wigged marshals, the shovel-
hatted abbes which they have borne in their time - the human mind
becomes affected in no ordinary degree. Some human minds heave a
sigh for the glories of bygone days; while others, considering
rather the lies and humbug, the vice and servility, which went
framed and glazed and enshrined, creaking along in those old
Juggernaut cars, with fools worshipping under the wheels, console
themselves for the decay of institutions that may have been
splendid and costly, but were ponderous, clumsy, slow, and unfit
for daily wear. The guardian of these defunct old carriages tells
some prodigious fibs concerning them: he pointed out one carriage
that was six hundred years old in his calendar; but any connoisseur
in bric-a-brac can see it was built at Paris in the Regent Orleans'
time.
Hence it is but a step to an institution in full life and vigour, -
a noble orphan-school for one thousand boys and girls, founded by
Don Pedro, who gave up to its use the superb convent of Belem, with
its splendid cloisters, vast airy dormitories, and magnificent
church. Some Oxford gentlemen would have wept to see the
desecrated edifice, - to think that the shaven polls and white gowns
were banished from it to give place to a thousand children, who
have not even the clergy to instruct them. "Every lad here may
choose his trade," our little informant said, who addressed us in
better French than any of our party spoke, whose manners were
perfectly gentlemanlike and respectful, and whose clothes, though
of a common cotton stuff, were cut and worn with a military
neatness and precision. All the children whom we remarked were
dressed with similar neatness, and it was a pleasure to go through
their various rooms for study, where some were busy at mathematics,
some at drawing, some attending a lecture on tailoring, while
others were sitting at the feet of a professor of the science of
shoemaking.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 9 of 126
Words from 4199 to 4732
of 65663
