mens that exist in any part of Europe. The city of Evora, in which it stands, is the capital of the fine province of Alemtejo. It is a place of great antiquity, and from its advantageous situation has probably been occupied as a town by all the successive races of men that have inhabited or conquered this part of the peninsula. According to Spanish and Portuguese antiquaries it was first built, by the Celts nearly eight hundred years before the Christian era, but of course no positive belief is to be given to assertions which are supported by no positive proof. Pliny and other Roman writers agree in thinking that it had been inhabited by the Gauls, Phoenicians, and Persians, in very remote times. That extraordinary man Quintus Sertorius, who, proscribed by Sylla, and, flying from his tyranny, nearly succeeded in establishing a great and separate republic in Spain and Portugal, took Evora about eighty years before Christ, fortified it in the Roman manner, and adorned it with many public edifices. Its next conqueror was Julius Cæsar, who further enlarged it, made it a principal town, and gave it the name of Liberalitas Julia. It continued, however, to be commonly called Ebura by the Romans, of which name the modern Portuguese denomination is only a slight corruption. It was taken by the conquering Moors in A. D. 715, and retaken from them in 1166 by the Portuguese Christians under the command of the celebrated Giraldo, "O cavalheiro sim medo" (the knight without fear), whose person is still represented in the city arms, riding on horseback with a naked sword in one hand, and the heads of a Moorish man and woman in the other. Since that time it has been a frequent residence of the Portuguese sovereigns, and John III. bestowed some repairs on its Roman aqueduct and other ancient structures in the course of the sixteenth century.

Evora is beautifully situated on an eminence which is nearly covered with orange and olive groves, vineyards, and orchards, while at the foot of the hill the country is laid out in corn-fields, and the middle distance varied with old and solemn-looking cork-woods. The city contains about 20,000 inhabitants, and is the seat of an archbishop. It formerly contained a prison and tribunal of the inquisition, but we are happy to say that even as far back as 1788 when Murphy travelled in Portugal, the offices of the inquisitors and familiars had become mere sinecures, and that the establishment has long been wholly suppressed. There was also a Jesuit college at Evora, but that, too, was suppressed at the expulsion of the order.

The first object that attracts the attention of the traveller on arriving at Evora, is the ancient temple represented in our engraving, and which, from some inscriptions discovered, appears to have been dedicated to the goddess Diana.

The front of this temple is what is called an hexastyle, i. c., it has six columns. The columns, of the delicate ornamental Corinthian order, are three feet four inches in diameter, and have suffered little from time and weather, or the violence of man. The entablature is entirely destroyed, except part of the first facia of the architrave. The sharp pinnacles by which it is crowned, and which give the upper part of the temple the appearance of an eastern fortification, are an addition made by the Moors, who could never adapt their beautiful but altogether different style of architecture to the style of the Greeks and Romans. The rest of the edifice is almost in its original condition, and is in a wonderful state of preservation, considering that in all probability eighteen centuries have passed since it was built by the Romans. The material of the building is not marble, but fine hard granite.

Antiquaries, who like to make everything as old as they can, have attributed the erection of this temple to Quintus Sertorius, and as Roman architecture was not equal in his time to so elegant a work, they have supposed he employed Greeks upon it. Perhaps a more reasonable supposition would be, that the temple was built about a century later, under the Roman emperors, when the arts were in a very advanced state.

The Portuguese having been rather deficient in taste with respect to this chaste and delicate temple: they have converted the interior into a slaughter-house for cattle to supply the butchers' shops of Evora.

Having given our readers a view and a short description of the beautiful Temple of Diana at Evora, we now present them with some more interesting antiquities which exist at the same place.

Our engraving represents a portion of the fine old Roman aqueduct, terminating toward the town with a circular castellum. These castella or castles answered more than one purpose. In the long water-courses and successions of aqueducts that supplied ancient Rome, they were erected at certain distances from each other as lodg

ing places for soldiers, who were charged with the protection and guard of the important works; and hence, in all probability, they derived their military name. Some of them were occupied by masons and builders constantly at hand to keep the aqueducts in repair, while others again merely served as fountains or conduits where the water could be procured and drawn off by means of pipes and cocks. In this latter sense, the old gray-stone building that used to be seen some years ago in the Pentonville fields near to White Conduit house, which place of entertainment took its name from it, was once a castellum, or, as we call it, a conduit, a term that equally implied an aqueduct or the pipe or cock at which water was drawn off. The tower at Evora is also a castellum of this sort. In the interior of it there is a reservoir to hold part of the water conveyed across the arches; and some pipes emit this water on the spot, while other tubes carried under ground convey the fluid to different fountains and cisterns within the town. In too many instances in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Dalmatia, and other countries where the ancient Romans left almost imperishable evidences of their sway, in the stupendous buildings they erected, works of similar public utility have been suffered to go to decay and become useless; but here both aqueduct and castellum are well preserved, and as useful as ever; and the modern inhabitants of Evora still drink the wholesome water that was brought to the place by art and industry some eighteen hundred years ago. The aqueduct is built of stone mixed with hard marble-like mortar or cement. The castellum is most neatly constructed of brick, and coated over with the almost imperishable Roman tonica or plaster. These ancient bricks are altogether different from ours. They are flat like paving tiles, seldom more than two inches thick, and as hard and as thoroughly baked as the solid clayey substance called terra-cotta. They are laid down horizontally, or on their flat sides, and the cement or mortar placed between them binds them together with wonderful strength and compactness. Walls and even vaulted roofs composed of these materials are frequently found in the most perfect state of preservation, when the parts of the same or some contiguous ancient edifice that were built of stone are mouldering away or in ruins. The fragilitythe perishableness which attaches to most of our modern brick buildings has nothing in common with the ancient Roman walls of brick, to the quality of which, in any country where stone and marble are scarce, builders and architects would do well to turn their attention. The walls of the castellum at Evora are as perfect as if they were built yesterday, and indeed much stronger, for the cement hardens with time.

The plan of this building, which will be better understood from our engraving than from words, is circular: its greatest circumference, not embracing the surrounding columns, is thirty-eight feet. The columns, which are eight in number, are of the Ionic order. In each intercolumniation there is a niche; and a door in one of these niches gives access to the reservoir of water and the interior of the building. The second story of the castellum is decorated with Ionic pilasters, between which are apertures to admit light and air. The top of the building is covered with an hemispherical dome.

There is another and more modern object at Evora which generally attracts the traveller's notice, and which is considered by many of the natives as far more curious than their Roman antiquities. When Mr. Murphy was there about half a century ago, and busily employed in making drawings of the temple and aqueduct, he was asked whether he had seen that wonder of Portugal, the human-bone or charnelhouse in the Franciscan monastery. On replying that he had not, his interlocutor, with the pride of a Cicerone, said, "Well then, Mr. Stranger, you have seen nothing! so come along with me." Murphy went; and after passing through the body of the Franciscan church, was ushered into a gloomy, horrible vault, over the archway of which he read the following somewhat startling inscription:

"Nos os ossos que aqui estamos
Pellos vossos esperamos,"

or, "We whose bones are here are expecting your bones."

This dismal apartment is about sixty feet long and thirty-six wide. On each side of the nave are four large, broad piers, and all the eight piers are completely covered over with grinning skulls and human bones, which are fastened upon them with a hard and rough stucco. Such exhibitions of the miserable remains of mortality are

repugnant to our feelings; and they produce no soberness of thought or salutary awe, being visited merely as curious shows.

Evora is about eighty English miles from Lisbon, lying a little to the south of the high road from that capital to Badajoz and Madrid. Besides several Roman remains, some interesting Celtic ruins and altars are found in the neighborhood of this ancient city.

CHAPTER VIII.-PORTUGAL.

FORESTS.-Besides the beauties of her cities, Portugal possesses many scenes of a highly romantic and interesting character, as well from the historical associations connected with them as from the rich and noble natural productions which adorn them. The soil of Portugal, like that of the neighboring kingdom (Spain), is extremely light; but the fine climate amply compensates for the want of a richer soil. The olive, the orange, the lemon, the fig, the pomegranate, the almond, and indeed every plant loving a warm climate, are to be found in the greatest luxury of growth. The deep tones of the olive mingling with the foliage of a lighter tint, and the golden hue of the orange and lemon through the dark leaves, give a character to the groves of Portugal peculiarly enchanting. The orchards of the nobility are forests of fruit-trees, interspersed with fountains in every possible variety of shape and situation; and the coolness imparted to the atmosphere by the shadows of the trees and the playing of the water, renders a walk in their gardens exceedingly pleasant. But, notwithstanding the little labor which is necessary to make the soil productive, large tracts of land remain totally uncultivated, and others are covered with forests of pine or of cork. The royal forest of the Alemtejo (beyond the Tagus) is the largest in extent in the country, and is as beautiful in its appearance as varied in its productions; now covering the level plain for leagues, and now climbing up the mountain-side; now overshadowing the roaring torrent, and now spreading its green canopy over the beautiful valley! Among the forest scenery, the pine bears a distinguishing preponderance. Though these trees do not grow to the magnitude of the same species in the northern climates, yet they serve all the purposes for which they are required by the Portuguese: charcoal and wood for burning are indispensable requisites in a country where coal has not been discovered; and the extreme inflammability of the pine renders it an invaluable product in the domestic economy of a Portuguese family. When used in the natural or uncharred state, the more resinous parts are cut out, and are used as lamps and torches by the country-people, while the remainder, in its greenest state, burns with a strong and bright flame. The pine also yields an exquisite nut, which the natives call "pintáô," and of which they are exceedingly fond. The appearance, also, of the pine in the peninsula is different from any of the same family in colder climates. The trunk is bare from the root to the height of twenty, thirty, or forty feet, when the branches shoot out in lines curved upward, and pointed with the apple which yields the nut. There are also many specimens of the common Scotch fir, but not in sufficient quantities to form a prominent feature in the products of the country. There is a fir of this description near Moira, on the Tagus, which for grandeur and size I have not seen surpassed. It is known as the "guerrillas' tree," from the frequent robberies and executions which took place beneath its branches, which were made to serve as a gallows to the thieves, when taken. Such specimens are, however, extremely rare; the heat causes the trees to shoot up to a disproportionate height, and the necessity of supplying the country with charcoal causes them to be cut down before they can acquire size by age. Here and there, amid the boundless woods, may be seen an olive grove, or a vineyard, surrounded by a hedge of aloes, whose strong pointed leaves render them useful as a fence as well as ornamental. The oak grows in considerable quantities, but is dwarfish and insignificant compared with the cork-tree, which, in Portugal at least, is king of the forest. The ancient forests of these noble trees are now mostly converted into parks for the king or nobility; they resemble much our larger kind of oak in the form of their branches, though, perhaps, more graceful; the leaves are smoother, and of a brighter green; the bark, which is of an immense