(Abridged chiefly from the Rev. Mr. Kinsey's "Portugal Illustrated.")
Spaniards and Portuguese.—"Strip a Spaniard of all his virtues, and you make a good Portuguese of him," says the Spanish proverb. I have heard it said more truly, "Add hypocrisy to a Spaniard's vices, and you have the Portuguese character." These nations blaspheme God by calling each other natural enemies. Their feelings are mutually hostile; but the Spaniards despise the Portuguese, and the Portuguese hate the Spaniards.—Southey.
Portugal.—Situated by the side of a country just five times its size, Portugal, but for the advantageous position of its coast, the good faith of England, and the weakness of its hostile neighbour, impassable roads, and numerous strong places, would long since have returned to the primitive condition of an Iberian province; but its separate existence as a nation has been preserved to it by the strength of the British alliance being brought into a glorious co-operation with all its own internal means of defence.—Kinsey.
Column of Disgrace.—About the middle of the last century, the Duke of Aviero was detected in a conspiracy with the Jesuits in Portugal, and accordingly executed. His house, at Belem, was levelled to the ground at the time of the Duke's decapitation, and on the site was erected a column of disgrace, which still remains, though some shops have been erected beside it to hide the inscription; a just symbol of the conduct of the nation on this subject, for what they cannot alter they strive to conceal.
Over the proscenium of the opera-house at Lisbon is a large clock placed rather in advance, whose dexter supporter is old Time with his scythe, and the sinister, one of the Muses playing on a lyre.
A Lisbon Dandy.—A small, squat, puffy figure incased within a large pack-saddle, upon the back of a lean, high-boned, straw-fed, cream-coloured nag, with an enormously flowing tail, whose length and breadth would appear to be each night guarded from discolouration by careful involution above the hocks. Taken, from his gridiron spurs and long pointed boots, up his broad, blue-striped pantaloons, à la Cossaque, to the thrice-folded piece of white linen on which he is seated in cool repose; thence by his cable chain, bearing seals as large as a warming-pan, and a key like an anchor; then a little higher to the figured waistcoat of early British manufacture, and the sack-shapened coat, up to the narrow brim sugar-loaf hat on his head,—where can be found his equal? Nor does he want a nose as big as the gnomon of a dial-plate; and two flanks of impenetrable, deep, black brushwood, extending under either ear, and almost concealing the countenance, to complete the singular contour of his features.
A Lisbon Water-carrier earns about sixpence per day, the moiety of which serves to procure him his bread, his fried sardinha from a cook's stall, and a little light wine perhaps, on holidays,—water being his general beverage, nay, one might almost say, his element. A mat in a large upper room, shared with several others, serves him in winter as a place of repose for the night; but during the summer he frequently sleeps out in the open air, making his filled water-barrel his pillow.
Vanity.—A young Lisbon dandy hearing an Englishman complain of the intolerable filth and stench of his metropolis, retorted that, for his part, when he was in London, it was the absence of that filth, and the want of the smells complained of, that had rendered his residence in our metropolis so disagreeable and uncomfortable to him. "No passion," as Southey says, "makes a man a liar so easily as vanity."
Dogs.—In Lisbon dogs seem to luxuriate under the violence of the heat, and to avoid the shady sides of the streets, though the thermometer of Fahrenheit be at 110 degrees; and scarcely an instance of canine madness is ever known to occur. When the French decreed the extinction of the tribe of curs that infest the streets, no native executioner could be found to put the exterminating law in force; nay, the very measure excited popular indignation.
Golden Sands.—Perhaps originally it was the fabled gold of the Tagus which attracted Jews to Lisbon in such numbers, and the general persuasion indeed is, that the yellow sands of this royal river did actually once produce sufficient gold to make a magnificent crown and sceptre for the amiable hands of that patriot sovereign, the good king Denis.