ALCOBAgA. 83 



ling walls, and ivy-grown arclies will alone remain to 

 attest the position of one of the proudest monasteries of 

 Europe. And so looking onwards to the future, and the 

 destruction which every year is sure to entail ; still more, 

 looking back to the past, and the crowds of holy l)rethren 

 who once peopled its courts, we strolled into every corner, 

 and examined every nook, and passed on from church to 

 library, and kitchen, and refectory, and through cloisters 

 and corridors of interminable length ; deserted now, and 

 from their very vastness looking doubly desolate and 

 forlorn, but speaking volumes by the solidity of their 

 structure for the strength and endurance which monastic 

 buildings usually affect, but which here appear to be 

 carried to an extreme I have not seen elsewhere ; for some 

 of the outer walls, which I measured, were no less than 

 ten feet in thickness, and doubtless the monastery, if 

 need were, could have stood a siege in its palmy days, 

 defended by the stout arms of a thousand monks, who 

 would fight lustily for their home, their possessions, and 

 their Order. 



The ground plan of this vast pile of buildings may be 

 roughly described as an irregular square, measuring in 

 round numbers some 700 feet on either face; but it is 

 again divided by the church and other buildings into four 

 smaller squares, each planted with orange trees and sur- 

 rounded with galleries and cloisters.* I have already said 

 that the principal buildings bear no traces of the fire by 

 which the bulk of the abbey was consumed : these are 

 comprised in the church, the library, the kitchen, the re- 

 fectory, and the hospedarium, or strangers' wing, and to 

 each of these in due order we turned our attention. 



We first visited the church, which stands in ^he centre 

 of the Jong western face of the monastery, and which is 



* Landmann's Observations on Portugal, vol. ii. 235. 

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