Letters [37]
or waistcoat. He looked at me sternly, and enquired in the French language what was my pleasure. I apologised for intruding upon him, and stated that, being informed that he occupied the situation of schoolmaster to the place, I had come to pay my respects to him, and to beg to be informed respecting the manner of instruction which he adopted. He said that whosoever told me that he was a schoolmaster lied, for that he was a brother of the convent. I replied that I had heard that all the friaries had been broken up and the brothers dismissed; whereupon he sighed, and said it was too true. He was then silent for a minute, and his better nature overcoming his angry feelings he produced a snuff-box and offered it to me. The snuff-box is the olive-branch of the Portuguese, and he who wishes to be on good terms with them, or to conciliate them, must never refuse to put his finger and thumb into it when preferred; I took therefore a large pinch, though I detest the dust, and we were soon friendly enough. He was eager to obtain news, especially from Lisbon and Spain. I told him that the officers of the regiments at Lisbon had the day before I left that place gone in a body to the Queen, and insisted upon her either receiving their swords or dismissing her Ministers; whereupon he rubbed his hands and said, 'I am sure that things will not remain tranquil at Lisbon.' Upon my saying that the affairs of Don Carlos were on the decline, he frowned, and said that it could not possibly be, for that God was too just to suffer it. I felt for the poor man, who had been driven from his home in the noble convent close by, and from a state of comfort and affluence reduced in his old age to indigence and misery, for his dwelling seemed to contain scarcely an article of furniture. I tried twice or thrice to induce him to converse on the school, but he always avoided the subject or said shortly that he knew nothing about it; the idea of being a schoolmaster was evidently humiliating to him.
On my leaving him, the boy came from his hiding-place and rejoined me; he said his reason for hiding himself was fear that his master might know that it was he who brought me to him, for that the old man was ashamed of appearing in the character of a schoolmaster. I asked the boy whether he or his parents were acquainted with the Scripture and ever read it; but he did not understand me. I must here observe that the boy was fifteen years of age, and that he was in many respects very intelligent and had some knowledge of the Latin language; nevertheless he knew not the Scripture even by name, and I have no doubt that at least one half of his countrymen are, in that respect, no wiser than himself. I have questioned the children of Portugal at the doors of village inns, at the hearths of their cottages, in the fields where they labour, at the stone Mountains by the way-sides where they water their cattle, about the Scripture, the Bible, the Old and New Testament, and in scarcely one instance have they known what I was alluding to or could return me a rational answer, though in all other instances I had no reason to complain of their want of apprehension. Indeed nothing has surprised me more than the free and unembarrassed manner with which the Portuguese peasantry sustain a conversation, and the purity of the language in which they express their thoughts; and yet very few of them can write or read, whereas the peasantry of our own country, whose education is in general much superior, are in their conversation coarse and dull almost to brutality, and absurdly ungrammatical in the language which they use, though the English tongue, upon the whole, is more simple in its grammar than the Portuguese.
On my way back from Mafra to Cintra I very nearly lost my life. As the night was closing in fast, we left the regular road by the advice of the guide, and descending the hill on which Mafra stands reached the bottom of the valley, from which there is a narrow pathway winding round the next hill,
On my leaving him, the boy came from his hiding-place and rejoined me; he said his reason for hiding himself was fear that his master might know that it was he who brought me to him, for that the old man was ashamed of appearing in the character of a schoolmaster. I asked the boy whether he or his parents were acquainted with the Scripture and ever read it; but he did not understand me. I must here observe that the boy was fifteen years of age, and that he was in many respects very intelligent and had some knowledge of the Latin language; nevertheless he knew not the Scripture even by name, and I have no doubt that at least one half of his countrymen are, in that respect, no wiser than himself. I have questioned the children of Portugal at the doors of village inns, at the hearths of their cottages, in the fields where they labour, at the stone Mountains by the way-sides where they water their cattle, about the Scripture, the Bible, the Old and New Testament, and in scarcely one instance have they known what I was alluding to or could return me a rational answer, though in all other instances I had no reason to complain of their want of apprehension. Indeed nothing has surprised me more than the free and unembarrassed manner with which the Portuguese peasantry sustain a conversation, and the purity of the language in which they express their thoughts; and yet very few of them can write or read, whereas the peasantry of our own country, whose education is in general much superior, are in their conversation coarse and dull almost to brutality, and absurdly ungrammatical in the language which they use, though the English tongue, upon the whole, is more simple in its grammar than the Portuguese.
On my way back from Mafra to Cintra I very nearly lost my life. As the night was closing in fast, we left the regular road by the advice of the guide, and descending the hill on which Mafra stands reached the bottom of the valley, from which there is a narrow pathway winding round the next hill,