BATALHA. 101 



It is of later date than the rest of the building, havin^^ 

 been intended as an addition, and to serve as a mausoleum 

 for himself and others of the Portuguese kings, by Dom 

 Manoel, who lived one hundred years after Dom Joao I. In 

 form it is an octagon, and each of its eight sides was de- 

 signed as a chapel and a royal tomb. Nothing can exceed 

 the elaborate ornamentation, the deeply carved moulding, 

 the lavish profusion of sculpture with which every arch 

 and w^indow is adorned. It is a perfect study of the ex- 

 tent to which decoration can be carried, when an architect 

 of correct taste has carte blanche, and funds are forth- 

 coming, as was the rare case in Portugal when Dom Manoel 

 sat upon the throne ; and the East just opened out by Yasco 

 de Grama, and the West just discovered by Columbus, were 

 already pouring their wealth into the treasuries, and ex- 

 citing most romantic expectations in the two nations 

 which inhabited the Peninsula. But the work of thitj 

 gorgeous chapel, so nobly designed, so auspiciously begun, 

 and already more than half completed, w^as suddenly ar- 

 rested by the untimely death of the architect ; and when a 

 successor was found to carry on the building, so incongruous 

 were his designs, and so inharmonious his plans, that Dom 

 Manoel, with the good taste he evidently possessed, put a 

 sudden stop to the work, until a more worthy architect 

 could be found ; and the result was, that it has remained 

 to this day as its first designer left it, and is still the capella 

 imperfetta, the lovely fragment, so exquisite that none 

 have ventured the attempt to finish it ; and so it has been 

 for three centuries and a half, and so it is now. There are 

 still to be seen the recessed chapels, each a marvel of 

 decorative art; the stone tracery of the windows, of won- 

 drous elegance and finish ; even the great buttresses more 

 highly adorned than ever buttress was before ; and nothing 

 finished. A sudden spell arrested the mason's chisel as 

 complete as in the fabled palace, where for a hundred 

 summers everything slept, and thought and time were 



