Here is a small theatre for operas, and a chapel, not unlike a mosque in shape, and arabesque ornaments, darkly shadowed by Spanish banners, the trophies of the battle of Elvas, gained by an ancestor of the Marialvas.
A long bower of vines, supported by marble pillars, leads from the palace to the chapel. There is something majestic in this verdant gallery, and the glow of sun-set piercing its foliage, lighted up the wan features of several superannuated servants of the family, who crawled out of their decayed chambers and threw themselves on their knees before the Grand Prior and Don Pedro.
We wandered about this forlorn, abandoned garden, whose stillness equalled that of a Carthusian convent, till dusk, when a refreshing wind having risen, waved the cypresses and scattered the white jasmine flowers over the parterres of myrtle in clouds like snow. Don Pedro filled the carriage with flowery sprays pulled from mutilated statues, and we were all half intoxicated before we reached my habitation with the delicious but overcoming perfume.
LETTER XVIII.
Excursion to Cintra.—Villa of Ramalhaô.—The Garden.—Collares.—Pavilion designed by Pillement.—A convulsive gallop.—Cold weather in July.
July 9th, 1787.
I WAS at the Marialva Palace by nine, and set off from thence with the Marquis for Cintra. Having the command of the Queen’s stables, in which are four thousand mules and two thousand horses, he orders as many relays as he pleases, and we changed mules four times in the space of an hour.
A few minutes after ten we were landed at Ramalhaô, a villa, under the pyramidical rocks of Cintra, Signor S. Arriaga was so kind as to lend me a month or two ago, and which I have not had time to visit till to-day. The suite of apartments are spacious and airy, and the views they command of sea and arid country boundless; but unless the heat becomes more violent, I shall be cooler than I wish in them, as they contain not a chimney except in the kitchen.
I found the garden in excellent order, and flourishing crops of vegetables springing up between rows of orange and citron. Such is the power of the climate, that the gardenias and Cape plants I brought with me from England, mere stumps, are covered with beautiful blossoms. The curled mallows, and some varieties of Indian-corn, sown by my English gardener, have shot up to a strange elevation, and begin already to form shady avenues and fairy forests, where children might play in perfection at landscape-gardening.
After I had passed half-an-hour in looking about me, the Marquis and I got into our chair and drove to his own villa; a new creation, which has cost him a great many thousand pounds sterling. Five years ago it was a wild hill bestrewn with flints and rocky fragments. At present you find a gay pavilion designed by Pillement, and elegantly decorated; a parterre with statues and fountains, thick alleys of laurel, bay, and laurustine, cascades, arbours, clipped box-trees, and every ornament the Portuguese taste in gardening renders desirable.