with a head smooth and yellow as a billiard-
ball, sit and gossip; the parrot catching
part of their discourse and coming out
with it by snatches, as if he were learning a
lesson.

The shops have a curious country town
look: generally uniting several trades in one,
like an American store. The pastry shops
sell port wine, which seems quite a liqueur;
the grocers, fire-wood and such trifles.
The wine-shops are quite open to the air,
and are full of Negro sailors, and English
mariners talking very loud to make the
English easier to the "d—furriners, who could
understand if they would—don't tell me,
Jack." These are the rough jokers who have
been known to charge across the Black Horse
Square, after regulation hours, disarm the
sentinels, drive off the relief guard, and force
a way to their boat, pushing off with three
cheers; their faces beaming with a sense of
having properly and creditably done what
England expects every man to do. You meet
them everywhere, arm in arm, in brandy
shops with red coppery pirate-looking Negro
sailors; carrying, to their boats, fish wrapped
up in red handkerchiefs; their clasp-knives
hung by a neat white knotted cord round
their necks, small gold rings, perhaps, in their
ears, their shoes small and dandyish; their
walk a rolling stagger, as if they were stepping
on waves, and did not find dry land as
firm as it was generally reported to be.
There they go! boatswain, coxswain,
quartermaster, and able-bodied seaman, staring
in at churches full of scented smoke, (as if
something or other were cooked perpetually
in the side chapel), pacing round the centre
statues in sea-side squares, ogling up at
servants watering the oleanders, or feeding the
parrots up in the balcony, or chaffing the
king's farrier who keeps an hotel near the
sea water side, and is as intense a John Bull,
with as buxom a rosy wife as ever England
bred.

But let us go into the Don Pedro square,
paved with wavy bands of black and white
stones as with a great oil cloth; giving it
a strange Rio Janeiro sort of look. It is
one of the largest squares in the world,
quite a Champ de Mars, surrounded by
shops, diligence offices and countinghouses.
At one end, near a large glass-windowed cafe,
(where officers read papers and sip ices, and
are so multiplied by the mirrors on the walls,
that they seem like a whole regiment reading
papers and sipping ices by word of
command) stands the theatre of Donna Maria, a
handsome building with wide hall and portico,
but with an unfortunate reverberating zinc
roof which, in rainy weather, renders the actors
inaudible.

I go in, one night, attracted by the crowds
that are flowing to the doors, like steel-filings
fIying to the arches of a magnet. The interior
is rich, with hanging of topaz-coloured
satin banded here and there with purple.

The seats in the pit are all of cane; there being
every provision for airiness and lightness.
There are, of course, some English middies
and sailors in the pit; who talk very loud, and
have a defiant contemptuous manner peculiarly
national. The only thing I can decipher
out of the snuffling nasal Jew Spanish
of the stage dialogue which is called Portuguese
is, that a certain Dom Jose Herriero
de dos Santos—who is dressed like Lord
Nelson, and who nearly kills me every time
he enters by his absurd bows and grimaces,
has come in the disguise of a poor artist to a
family, with whom he is about to enter into
alliance. The father, a little, prosy, man
with a dry drollery of his own, suspects
him to be a swindler; a suspicion that
leads to various complications; but is
legitimately removed when the Dom appears in all
his lustre, and claims his bride; at which
the little diplomatic man takes snuff and
rubs his hands as if he had seen through it
all the time. The drollest thing was, that,
at the end of each act, every human being in
the pit, rose with one accord; without
smiling, tied handkerchiefs to the back of
their case-seats, and retired to the lobby to
hastily smoke a cigarette and eat stewed-
pears; which were in active sale at the
buffet.

I do not think there was one woman
in the pit. Indeed in some Spanish
theatres, the women all sit huddled in a sort
of omnibus-box by themselves. Now, that
the men with the yellow teeth, sallow full
faces, and scorched fore-fingers, have
untied their handkerchiefs, and are waiting for
Lord Nelson in the white satin knee-breeches,
with intense expectation, I look up at the
boxes, beating the covert for a beautifal face.
What? Not one? No: only fat and sensual
faces, all run to nose, as if by perpetually
smelling at greasy dinners; crisp wiry
animal negro hair; full brown red lips, mean
chins, and foreheads villanously low.  Bands
and ropes of black shiny hair looped up with
strings of pearl, ending in a top-knot strung
with gold and coral. Not one beauty?
Yes, one, with fire-fly eyes and soft brown
cheeks deepening to a peachy red; who, with
rounded white arms, leans forward hanging
upon the lips of Lord Nelson in the court
suit, tail coat, and white satin breeches,
entranced.

Tired of this, and the perpetual running in
and out to cigarettes and stewed-pears in
the lobby, I leave; just as the scene opens,
with the little man dressed as a cobbler,
singing comic songs; much to the indignation
of the late Lord Nelson, who is now
bolstered out as a despotic rich man, living in a
sort of palace near the cobbler's-stall. Once
outside the theatre, I hasten up and down
streets—alternate hills and valleys—to the
public gardens, which lie in the centre of the
city, to the left of the square of Don Pedro,
dropping in first at the Braganca to see a