A Dinner.—A dish of yellow-looking bacalhao, the worst supposable specimen of our saltings in Newfoundland; a platter of compact, black, greasy, dirty-looking rice; a pound, if so much, of poor half-fed meat; a certain proportion of hard-boiled beef, that has never seen the salting pan, having already yielded its nutritious qualities to a swinging tureen of Spartan soup, and now requiring the accompaniment of a satellite tongue, or friendly slice of Lamego bacon, to impait a dull relish to it; potatoes of leaden continuity; dumplings of adamantine contexture, that Carthaginian vinegar itself might fail to dissolve; with offensive vegetables, and something in a round shape, said to be imported from Holland, and called cheese, but more like the unyielding rock of flint in the tenacity of its impenetrable substance; a small quantity of very small wine; abundance of water; and an awful army of red ants, probably imported from the Brazils—the wood of which the chairs and tables are made, hurrying across the cloth with characteristic industry;—such are the principal features of the quiet family dinner-table of the Portuguese.
The Dockyard of Lisbon is scarcely as extensive as many of the largest of our private ship-builders on the banks of the Thames and the Avon.
Funerals.—In Portugal the corpse is placed in an open coffin, and the head and feet are left bare. A vessel filled with holy water is placed at the foot of the bier, which the priests and relatives of the deceased sprinkle on the body. The service being concluded, the corpse is followed by the relatives down into the vaults below the church, where vinegar and quick lime having been poured upon the body, the falling lid of the coffin is closed and locked, and the key delivered to the chief mourner, who proceeds immediately from the funeral, with his party of friends who have witnessed the interment take place, to the house of the defunct, where the key being left with the nearest relative, and the complimentary visit being paid, the rite is considered as terminated. No fire is lighted in the house of a deceased person upon the day of his funeral, and the relatives, who live in separate houses, are in the habit of supplying a ready-dressed dinner, under the supposition that the inmates are too much absorbed in grief to be equal to giving any orders for the preparation of food. During the course of the ensuing week, the chief mourners receive their several relatives and friends at tea. The assembly is sorrowful and dull. It has been asserted, though not corroborated, that such is the poverty and disregard of decorum on the part of the Portuguese government, that when a person dies without leaving behind sufficient to defray the expenses of his funeral, the dead body is laid on the pavement of the most public street, with a box upon the breast, into which passers-by drop copper or silver coin, until sufficient has thus been obtained to defray the expense of interment; and that a soldier stands at the head of the body to see that no money is abstracted; for, in Portugal, even the sacred purpose for which it is intended would not secure it without his protection.
There is no pardoning soi-disant liberaux, who prove, by their acts, the greatest enemies of the sacred dignity of liberty.
PUNISHMENT OF DEATH.
Decollatio, or beheading, was a military punishment among the Romans. In early times it was performed with an axe, and afterwards with a sword. It is worthy of remark, that in all countries where beheading and hanging are used as capital punishments, the former is always considered less ignominious. Thus, in England, beheading is the punishment of nobles, when commoners for the same crime are hanged. The crime of high treason is here punished with beheading. Commoners, however, are hanged before the head is cut off, and nobles also, unless the king remits that part of the punishment. In Prussia, formerly a nobleman could not be hanged; and if his crime was such that the law required this punishment, he was degraded before the execution. At present, hanging is not used in that country, and since so many instances have occurred of extreme suffering, on the part of the criminal, caused by the unskilfulness of the executioner in beheading with the sword, this mode of execution has been abolished. Beheading in Prussia is now always performed with a heavy axe, the sufferer being previously tied to a block. In France, during the revolutionary government, beheading by means of a machine, the guillotine, came into use, and still prevails there, to the exclusion of all other modes of capital punishment. A person who has murdered his father or mother, however, has his right arm cut off the moment before he is guillotined. In the middle ages, it was, in some states, the duty of the youngest magistrates to perform the executions with the sword. In China, it is well known that beheading is practised, sometimes accompanied with the most studied torments. In the United States of America, beheading is unknown, the halter being the only instrument of capital punishment. In many European countries, beheading with the sword still prevails.
P.