mountain. Nothing is more sullen and uninviting than the south-
western aspect of the stony wall which, on the side of Lisbon,
seems to shield Cintra from the eye of the world, but the other
side is a mingled scene of fairy beauty, artificial elegance,
savage grandeur, domes, turrets, enormous trees, flowers and
waterfalls, such as is met with nowhere else beneath the sun. Oh!
there are strange and wonderful objects at Cintra, and strange and
wonderful recollections attached to them. The ruin on that lofty
peak, and which covers part of the side of that precipitous steep,
was once the principal stronghold of the Lusitanian Moors, and
thither, long after they had disappeared, at a particular moon of
every year, were wont to repair wild santons of Maugrabie, to pray
at the tomb of a famous Sidi, who slumbers amongst the rocks. That
grey palace witnessed the assemblage of the last cortes held by the
boy king Sebastian, ere he departed on his romantic expedition
against the Moors, who so well avenged their insulted faith and
country at Alcazarquibir, and in that low shady quinta, embowered
amongst those tall alcornoques, once dwelt John de Castro, the
strange old viceroy of Goa, who pawned the hairs of his dead son's
beard to raise money to repair the ruined wall of a fortress
threatened by the heathen of Ind; those crumbling stones which
stand before the portal, deeply graven, not with "runes," but
things equally dark, Sanscrit rhymes from the Vedas, were brought
by him from Goa, the most brilliant scene of his glory, before
Portugal had become a base kingdom; and down that dingle, on an
abrupt rocky promontory, stand the ruined halls of the English
Millionaire, who there nursed the wayward fancies of a mind as
wild, rich, and variegated as the scenes around. Yes, wonderful
are the objects which meet the eye at Cintra, and wonderful are the
recollections attached to them.