Meanwhile Portugal will continue to fix, as it has for some time attracted, much of the attention of Englishmen. We have been so long allied with that territory, that without meaning to insinuate any thing against its independence, we have always looked upon it in the same light as a colony of our own; and indeed have been, and are pledged to defend it from foreign aggression as we would the proper soil of England. We are, therefore, disposed to encourage every attempt, that is made with even a tolerable degree of success, to render the aspect of the country, and the every-day life and manners of its inhabitants better known. Such is the purpose of the volume now on our table, which the pressure of a season remarkably fertile in new works, has prevented us from noticing before.

Before we come to the merits, however, we must beg leave to apprize Mr. Kinsey of the faults of his production. In the first place, it is throughout written in a loose and rambling style, which bespeaks very little of those habits of study that are supposed to have been moulded into the life of a Bachelor of Divinity, and still more of a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. In the next place, he treats his subject in an enlarged and detailed manner, as if it had not been already sufficiently handled by fifty authors who have preceded him. A tourist in these our days, when every body is travelling, or has travelled over the continent, betrays a singular want of good taste, when he attempts to supersede by his own journal the necessity for consulting any other, particularly if it be confined to a country so frequently visited and described, and really so limited in its producible features, as Portugal. He has too many quotations from Link, whose work seems to have furnished him with much more matter than his own powers of observation. He has also too many quotations from Childe Harold, and Thomson's Seasons, the introduction of which into his text is puerile. We pass over his bigotry as a matter of course. Indeed, the wonder would be, if a Fellow of Oxford could make even the slightest allusion to a religion differing from his own, without caricaturing and misrepresenting it in the most ludicrous manner. Mr. Kinsey speaks of all the clerical individuals whom he actually conversed with in Portugal, as models of morality, of hospitality, and benevolence; and yet when he forms them into classes, he censures them without remorse. As to the religious customs of the people, they are nothing else than a collection of all the follies, absurdities, and superstitions, that ever yet disgraced the human race-if this Bachelor of Divinity be worthy of belief on such a subject.

The fact is, and we may as well mention it here once for all, that English travellers never take into their account, when they are observing on the religion of Portugal, or any other Catholic country, that the faith being a very ancient one, is traditionally connected with a great variety of national and local customs, the

produce of dark ages, and of a state of manners very different from that which prevails amongst us. These practices are so many excrescences, which time and the progress of education will ultimately remove, and which indeed natives of intelligence and discernment already perceive and wish to see abandoned. Such superstitions are easily separable, by any candid and well informed mind that will take the trouble to distinguish them from the real essence of the religion, which in truth differs but in one or two points from the mode of worship established in England. It is, therefore, much to be lamented, particularly in times when deism, and even atheism, are but too extensively prevalent, that Christian writers should speak with levity or ridicule of any system of worship founded on the principles of Christianity.

The merits of the work consist chiefly in the illustrations which adorn it. They are numerous, well designed, and executed in a very creditable style. With respect to the narrative itself, which is divided into letters, we have been principally interested in that part of it that relates the author's excursion into the Northern provinces of Portugal. We shall, therefore, make no apology for passing over his learned dissertations on travelling in general, on the division of Portugal, its history in the times of the Phonicians, the Carthaginians, the Romans, Constantine, and the Moors. There is nothing like beginning a subject from the beginning, and accordingly we have here in a journal written only last year, and published but a few months ago, the A, B, C, of Lusitania. We are treated to a complete genealogical table of the sovereigns of that nation, from Henry of Burgundy down to Don Pedro; and with corresponding historical sketches, which if they answer no other purpose, serve not inconsiderably to swell out the pages of the work.

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We shall also avoid, as much more than a "thrice repeated tale," the author's observations on the streets and public edifices of Lisbon, the great earthquake by which it was visited, and the habits of the different classes of its population. We must, however, express our surprise at the want of gallantry which he betrays, when he speaks of the ladies of that capital. He calls them women,' and 'lovely but unsatisfactory specimens of the weaker vessel! We apprehend that our bachelor must have had little intercourse with the ranks of good society in Lisbon, if he could afford no warmer praises for the fair than those which he has here bestowed upon them. He is still more sparing of his eulogies upon the Lisbonian lords of the creation.

Nature,' he says, 6 seems to have done her worst here for the men of the better classes in life; and to talk of "the human face divine" in Lisbon, would be a libel upon the dispensations of Providence. The Jews and the Indians must surely have intermixed with the Portuguese gentry in marriages, and thus have transfused into Lusitanian physiognomy the strength of their own peculiar features, which are thus seen in unpleasing

conjunction. The Moors appear to have left in Portugal but few memorials or traces of their own characteristic brilliancy of visage to relieve the ugliness, which seems to be, in an eminent degree, the unrivalled property of the modern male inhabitants of Olyssipolis, or the public Portuguese face, it is to be presumed, would have been more agreeable.'-p. 74.

This is severe enough; but the author, not content with such a sweeping denunciation, adds the following caricature:

'Now of all animals in creation, the Lisbon dandy, or fashionable Lusitanian swell, is by far the lowest in the scale of mere existence. I have been haunted in my dreams by visions of ugliness since the first time I beheld a small, squat, puffy figure,-what was it? could it be of a man? -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 discoloration 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 narrowbrim 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 impenetrably deep black brush-wood, extending under either ear, and almost concealing the countenance, to complete the singular contour of his features.'-pp. 74, 75.

In the present political condition of Portugal, it is painful to find that there is no class of its inhabitants to which the friends of liberty can look with confidence for its regeneration. The merchants of Lisbon and Oporto are undoubtedly men of intelligence, and their wealth naturally generates in their minds a sentiment of independence, and a strong disposition towards free institutions. But they are not numerous enough to exercise any solid influence upon the government of the country. They have, moreover, been much harassed by the revolutions and counter-revolutions whch have for several years succeeded each other; and as business must stand as long as public tranquillity remains uncertain, they have become adverse to all changes, even to those which afford a promise of improvement. The nobility of Portugal are, perhaps, the most degenerate and contemptible specimens of the class, to be found in any country. We believe that our author's description of them is, with some few exceptions, substantially correct. anecdote with which he illustrates it, will be read with a painful interest.

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• Destitute of education, as of virtuous principles, their whole lives are devoted to profligacy and immorality of every kind. Their pride, their prejudices, ignorance, extravagance, poverty, and fawning habits in a miserable court, have brought them into the most disgraceful state of moral degradation. Maintaining large retinues, and keeping up large

establishments of servants, who are fed upon rice and bacalhao (salt fish), by far the greater part of the Portuguese noblesse drag on an ignominious existence, without scarcely possessing the means of purchasing for themselves the luxuries of life. Since the introduction of the constitutional system, the independent shopkeepers of Lisbon can scarcely be ever induced to give credit to this haughty class of titled beggars; and medical practitioners are shy in attending their summons, since fine words without fees would be their certain remuneration.

It is scarcely two years since, that a native Portuguese physician obtained, at length, as he flattered himself, eminent and valuable practice in Lisbon, his attendance being required at the houses of nearly all the invalid fidalghos. Although it is the custom that the carriage of the sick person should be always sent to bring the physician or surgeon when he is required, this unfortunate gentleman found it more convenient, perhaps more stylish, to set up his own sége, at an annual expense of about one hundred and fifty pounds. Being a man of considerable ability, his services soon became in universal requisition, and the inexperienced observer would thence have concluded that he was rapidly rising to fame and fortune; but no such thing. After a short career of ill-requited fatigue, he was seized by a fever of the brain, which proved fatal after a few days suffering; but previously to his death, he revealed the fact to his distressed family, that during the whole period of his medical practice in Lisbon, he had never received one fee from the higher classes, in whose sick chambers his whole time almost had been consumed. He left his widow and his four children, at his death, in a state of the utmost destitution. His books, furniture, sége, and mules, brought in but a very small and inadequate sum to meet the wants of his helpless relic and her poor fatherless children. In searching amongst the papers of the deceased, a list was found by some friends of those persons whom he had been in the habit of attending, and urgent applications were immediately made to those quarters for some part, however small it might be, of the remuneration due for the services which he had rendered. Alas! the appeal was made in vain, for it was made to fidalghos; and they had neither the heart nor the principle that might incline them to listen to the widow's cry, and to satisfy the claims of justice. She is now living with her children in Lisbon, unnoticed, unaided, and unpitied, in the depth of cheerless poverty and despair, for which there seems no promise of any alleviation,

One need not, after this anecdote, insist further in the comparative estimate of character between the despised Galician and the unprincipled fidalgho. But still truth demands that it should be further stated of this class, that they are the natural enemies to every attempted improvement in the state, which might have the effect of diminishing, or prejudicing in any way, their aristocratical privileges; and that every bill almost, which has received the sanction of the lower chamber, having for its object the introduction of some enlightened and liberal measure, or the repeal of some antiquated and obnoxious law, has by their contrivance been defeated, and thrown out by the upper house.

The personal appearance of the fidalghos is not more attractive than their moral and political principles. While the lower classes, with whom one jostles in the streets of Lisbon, have rather a fine and manly appearance, far beyond that of the higher at all events, the stature, gait, and

physiognomy of the fidalgho, are in the highest degree mean and repulsive. The unethereal mould of visage, the beamless eye and unintellectual mien, and listless manner of those to whom a sternness of countenance has not given a semblance of something worse, lead instantly to the persuasion that the nobles of Portugal are, in a large proportion, as destitute of mind as of manly beauty. Well may the members of such a community be characterized as a little lower than the angels!" pp. 77-79.

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There is no decided middle class in Portugal. In that country, as in Spain, many young men are to be found connected with the army, and educated in the colleges, who are animated by sentiments favourable to the cause of liberty. But they are too intemperate and desultory in their mode of serving it. Indeed it may be taken for granted, that no charter containing even the shadow of a free constitution, can ever be carried into practice unless the sovereign be thoroughly well affected towards it, and unless a few men, like the Marquis Palmella, can be found to compose a government which would act upon it with firmness and good faith.

Our author, after visiting Cintra and its neighbouring convents and vineyards, was at Oporto during the troubles which took place under the late government of the Infanta Regent, on the dismissal of the popular minister, Saldanha. An opportunity was thus afforded him of seeing pretty clearly how the new institutions worked, and we imagine that the conclusions at which he arrives concerning them, are not very distant from the truth.

'That the Portuguese will be slow in remodelling the system of their internal government, after the best examples of polity afforded them by the European Powers, every observation which our limited means have enabled us to make, would induce us to conclude. The free play of the works of the new machine is to a certain degree impeded by the prejudices and private interests of the privileged classes, the nobility and the priesthood; and it would be necessary for each to surrender a portion of its encroachments upon the rights of the people, before the nation can fully experience all the benefits intended by the concession of the Constitutional Charter. The system of reform must be effectual in its operation among those who surround the throne, among the members of the upper Chamber, the monastic orders, and the ministers of religion in general, before the nation can hope to derive any great advantage from the labours of the deputies in attempting improvements in the condition of the state.

If the new laws emanate from uncorrupt sources, and the interests of all parties are made wholly subordinate to the public good, there is no reason why we may not indulge in the no distant prospect of the entire renovation of a people whose ancestors, however degraded their descendants may be in the estimation of other powers, in the four first periods of the monarchy waged successful wars against the Moors, and finally expelled them from the territory of Lusitania, while yet they remained masters of their possessions in Spain.

Their discovery of a maritime route to India, and the consequent change brought about in the character of European commerce, and, at a more recent date, the banishment of the Jesuits from the soil of Portugal,