CHAPEL NEAR GUIMARAENS.
The period of Portuguese supremacy lasted then, altogether, less than a century. There is an irresistible temptation to ponder over what results were lost by its sudden downfall, and to seek therein some explanation of the strange fact that Portugal alone among the southern nations of Europe has never had a national art. There was a moment when the foundations for it seemed to be laid: it was the period at which early Spanish art was putting forth its first efforts, while that of Italy was in its prime. Under Emanuel the Fortunate and his successor Portugal was rich and powerful. Its intellect and ambition had been stimulated by the achievements of its great navigators. There was an awakening of interest in art and letters. A school of poets had arisen of which Camoens was to be the crown. The court, mindful of the duties of patronage, was building new churches and convents and decorating the old ones with religious pictures, and in Portugal religious feeling has always been peculiarly strong. Many of these pictures are still preserved. They are not, however, of a high order of merit, and it is not even certain that they are the work of native artists, some authorities inclining to the belief that they were done by inferior Flemish painters visiting the country, and are therefore the lees of the Flemish school, not the flower of a national one. Universal belief among the Portuguese attributes them to Gran Vasco, a master whose very existence is mythical, and who if he had lived several lives could not have painted all the works of various styles which are ascribed to him. That the artistic sense was not lacking in the Portuguese people is abundantly shown in their architecture, in their repoussé-work of the fifteenth century and the carvings in wood and stone. The church and convent at Belem, the work of this period, are ornamented by Gothic stone-work of exquisite richness and fertility of invention. The church is unfinished, like the epoch it commemorates. To an age of activity and conquest succeeded one of gloom and depression. The last of the kings whom the nation had leaned on, while it supported them so loyally, had fallen at Alcazar, and in the struggle which ensued for the succession Portugal fell an easy prey to the strongest claimant. Philip II. strengthened his claim to the vacant throne by sending an army of twenty thousand men into the country under the command of the duke of Alva, and the other heirs were too weak or too divided to oppose him. The discoveries and conquests made by Portugal had laid the foundations of riches and power for other nations: her own immediate benefit from them was over. The period of prosperous repose which may be expected to follow one of great national activity was denied to her. When the house of Braganza recovered its rights, the impulse to creative art was extinct.
CLOISTERS OF BELEM CONVENT.
Though it was as a maritime power that Portugal rose to its greatest height, it has been from time immemorial an agricultural nation, and the mass of its people are engaged in tilling the soil. They are a cheerful, industrious race, who, far from meriting Lord Byron's contemptuous epithet of "Lusitanian boors," are gifted with a natural courtesy and refinement of manner. A New-England farmer would be tempted to follow the poet's example and regard them with contempt: weighed in his balance, they would certainly be found wanting. There is no public-school system in operation, and the Portuguese farmer is not likely to be able to read or sign his name. But the want of literature is not felt in a Southern country, where social intercourse is far more cultivated than in our own rural districts. It is not by reading the newspapers, but by talking matters over with his neighbor, that the Portuguese farmer obtains his sound and intelligent views on the politics of his country. He is a great talker, taking a keen interest in all that goes on, enjoying a joke thoroughly and addressing his comrade with all the ceremonies and distinctions of a language which contains half a dozen different forms of address. The illiterate peasant is no whit behind the man of culture in the purity of his Portuguese. In no country in Europe is the language kept freer from dialect, and this notwithstanding the fact that it is one of involved grammatical forms. In France the use of the imperfect subjunctive is given up by the lower classes and by foreigners, but in Portugal the peasant has still deeper subtleties of speech at the end of his tongue. Add to this that he has a vocabulary of abuse before which the Spaniard or the California mule-driver would be silenced, and you have the extent of his linguistic accomplishments. This profane eloquence was an art imparted no doubt by the Moors. The refinements of syntax come from the Latin, to which Portuguese bears more affinity in form than any other modern language.
From the Romans the Lusitanian received his first lessons in agriculture—lessons which have never been entirely superseded. His plough was given him by the Romans, and he has not yet seen fit to alter the pattern. The ox-cart used in town and country for all purposes of draught is another relic preserved intact. Its wheels of solid wood are fastened to the axle, which revolves with them, this revolution being accompanied by a chorus of inharmonious shrieks and creaks and wails which to the foreign and prejudiced nerve is simply agonizing. Its master hears it with a different ear: he finds it rather cheerful than otherwise, good to enliven the oxen, to dispel the silence of lonely places and to frighten away wolves and bogies, of which enemies he has a childish awe. Instead, therefore, of pouring oil upon this discord, he applies lemon-juice to aggravate the sound! The cart pleases the eye of the stranger more than his ear. When in the vintage season the upright poles forming its sides are bound together by a wickerwork of vine branches with their large leaves, and the inside is heaped with purple grapes, it is a goodly sight, and one which Alma-Tadema might paint as a Roman vintage, for it is doubtless a counterfeit presentment of the grape-laden wains which moved in the season of vintage over the Campagna. The results in both cases were the same, for the vinho verde, a harsh but refreshing wine, made and drunk by the country-people, is made in the same way and is probably identical with that wherewith the Latin farmer slaked his thirst. The recipe may have descended through Lusus, the companion of Bacchus, whom tradition names as the father of the Lusitanian. Be that as it may, the Portuguese is still favored of the wine-god. Wine flows for him even more freely than water, which gift of Nature has to be dug for and sought far and wide. He drinks the ruby liquid at home and carries it afield: he even shares it with his horse, who sinks his nose, nothing loth, in its inviting depths, and neither man nor beast shows any ill effects from this indulgence.
A MADEIRA FISHERMAN.
It is in the north-western corner of the country, in the Minho province, that the highest rural prosperity is to be met with. This little province, scarcely as large as the State of Delaware, but with more than four times its population, has successfully solved the problem of affording labor and sustenance in nearly equal shares to a large number of inhabitants. Bonanza-farming is unheard of there. The high perfection of its culture, which gives the whole province the trim, thriving air of a well-kept garden, comes from individual labor minutely bestowed on small surfaces. No mowing-, threshing- or other machines are used. Instead of labor-saving, there is labor cheerfully expended—in the place of the patent mower, a patient toiler (often of the fair sex), armed with a short, curved reaping-hook. The very water, which flows plentifully in fountains and channels, comes not direct from heaven without the aid of man. It is coaxed down from the hills in tedious miles of aqueduct or forced up from a great depth by a rustic water-wheel worked by oxen, and is then distributed over the land. Except for its aridity, the climate is kind to the small farmer: there is no long inactivity forced upon him by a cold winter. A constant succession of crops may be raised, and all through the year he works cheerfully and industriously, finding his ten acres enough and his curious broad hoe dexterously wielded the equivalent of shovel and pickaxe. If ignorant of our inventions, he is intimately acquainted with some American products. If a Yankee were to walk into a Portuguese farm-house and surprise the family at dinner, he would be sure to see on the table two articles which, however oddly served, would be in their essentials familiar to him—Indian meal and salt codfish. Indian corn has long been cultivated as the principal grain: it is mixed with rye to make the bread in every-day use. The Newfoundland cod, under the name of bacalhau, has crept far into the affections of the nation, its lack of succulence being atoned for by a rich infusion of olive oil, so that the native beef, cheap and good as it is, has no chance in comparison. Altogether, the Portuguese peasant with his wine, his oil and his bacalhau fares better than most of his class. At Christmas-tide he stakes his digestion on rebanadas, a Moorish invention—nothing less than ambrosial flapjacks made by soaking huge slices of wheaten bread in new milk, frying them in olive oil and then spreading them lavishly with honey.