than with those of God; their occupations, too, which are simple,
and requiring less of ingenuity and skill than those which engage
the attention of the other portion of their fellow-creatures, are
less favourable to the engendering of self-conceit and sufficiency
so utterly at variance with that lowliness of spirit which
constitutes the best foundation of piety. The sneerers and
scoffers at religion do not spring from amongst the simple children
of nature, but are the excrescences of overwrought refinement, and
though their baneful influence has indeed penetrated to the country
and corrupted man there, the source and fountainhead was amongst
crowded houses, where nature is scarcely known. I am not one of
those who look for perfection amongst the rural population of any
country; perfection is not to be found amongst the children of the
fall, wherever their abodes may happen to be; but, until the heart
discredits the existence of a God, there is still hope for the soul
of the possessor, however stained with crime he may be, for even
Simon the magician was converted; but when the heart is once
steeled with infidelity, infidelity confirmed by carnal wisdom, an
exuberance of the grace of God is required to melt it, which is
seldom manifested; for we read in the blessed book that the
Pharisee and the wizard became receptacles of grace, but where is
there mention made of the conversion of the sneering Sadducee, and
is the modern infidel aught but a Sadducee of later date?

It was dark night before we reached Evora, and having taken leave
of my friends, who kindly requested me to consider their house my
home, I and my servant went to the Largo de San Francisco, in which
the muleteer informed me was the best hostelry of the town. We
rode into the kitchen, at the extreme end of which was the stable,
as is customary in Portugal. The house was kept by an aged gypsy-