LETTER XXIX.
Excursion to Penha Verde.—Resemblance of that Villa to the edifices in Gaspar Poussin’s landscapes.—The ancient pine-trees, said to have been planted by Don John de Castro.—The old forests displaced by gaudy terraces.—Influx of Visiters.—A celebrated Prior’s erudition and strange anachronisms.—The Beast in the Apocalypse.—Œcolampadius.—Bevy of Palace damsels.—Fête at the Marialva Villa.—The Queen and the Royal Family.—A favourite dwarf Negress.—Dignified manner of the Queen.—Profound respect inspired by her presence.—Rigorous etiquette.—Grand display of Fireworks.—The young Countess of Lumiares.—Affecting resemblance.
September 22nd, 1787.
WHEN I got up, the mists were stealing off the hills, and the distant sea discovering itself in all its azure bloom. Though I had been led to expect many visiters of importance from Lisbon, the morning was so inviting that I could not resist riding out after breakfast, even at the risk of not being present at their arrival.
I took the road to Collares, and found the air delightfully soft and fragrant. Some rain which had lately fallen, had refreshed the whole face of the country, and tinged the steeps beyond Penha Verde with purple and green; for the numerous tribe of heaths had started into blossom, and the little irregular lawns, overhung by crooked cork-trees, which occur so frequently by the way-side, are now covered with large white lilies streaked with pink.
Penha Verde itself is a lovely spot. The villa, with its low, flat roofs, and a loggia projecting at one end, exactly resembles the edifices in Gaspar Poussin’s landscapes. Before one of the fronts is a square parterre with a fountain in the middle, and niches in the walls with antique busts. Above these walls a variety of trees and shrubs rise to a great elevation, and compose a mass of the richest foliage. The pines, which, by their bright-green colour, have given the epithet of verdant to this rocky point (Penha Verde), are as picturesque as those I used to admire so warmly in the Negroni garden at Rome, and full as ancient, perhaps more so: tradition assures us they were planted by the far-famed Don John de Castro, whose heart reposes in a small marble chapel beneath their shade.
How often must that heroic heart, whilst it still beat in one of the best and most magnanimous of human bosoms, have yearned after this calm retirement! Here, at least, did it promise itself that rest so cruelly denied him by the blind perversities of his ungrateful countrymen: for his had been an arduous contest, a long and agonizing struggle, not only in the field under a burning sun, and in the face of peril and death, but in sustaining the glory and good fame of Portugal against court intrigues, and the vile cabals of envious, domestic enemies.
These scenes, though still enchanting, have most probably undergone great changes since his days. The deep forests we read of have disappeared, and with them many a spring they fostered. Architectural fountains, gaudy terraces, and regular stripes of orange-gardens, have usurped the place of those wild orchards and gushing rivulets he may be supposed to have often visited in his dreams, when removed some thousand leagues from his native country. All these are changed; but mankind are the same as in his time, equally insensible to the warning voice of genuine patriotism, equally disposed to crouch under the rod of corrupt tyranny. And thus, by the neglect of wise and virtuous men, and a mean subserviency to knavish fools, eras which might become of gold, are transmuted by an accursed alchymy into iron rusted with blood.
Impressed with all the recollections this most interesting spot could not fail to inspire, I could hardly tear myself away from it. Again and again did I follow the mossy steps, which wind up amongst shady rocks to the little platform, terminated by the sepulchral chapel—
“——densis quam pinus opacat
Frondibus et nulla lucos agitante procella
Stridula coniferis modulatur carmina ramis.”