22 A SPRING TOUR IN TORTUGAL. 



effect of opening our way to Lyons, Avhere we were glad 

 enough to arrive, and to witness the unwonted spectacle of 

 ()0,000 troops bivouacked in the squares and streetB in a 

 foggy niglit in winter. 



Far more akirniing was the insurrection in Egypt, the 

 particulars of whicli I have elsewhere described, which 

 occurred in the spring of 18G5, and which was a very for- 

 midable outburst of JMuslim fanaticism against Christians, 

 native and foreign. And now, to crown all our experiences, 

 was this gentle Portuguese disturbance ; which, however, 

 never advanced beyond angry expressions and loud mur- 

 murs and complaints, and, as a treasonable movement, was 

 not to bo compared for a moment with the loudly-ex- 

 pressed determination for a revolution which we heard 

 openly declared both at the table d'hote in the great hotel 

 at JMadrid and in the Puerta del Sol, as we passed through 

 on our way home, threats too which did not prove to be 

 empty and unmeaning, but very soon to ripen into action, 

 and successful action too, as we all know now. 



To return, however, to the Portuguese capital, and to 

 sum up our general impressions of it as it struck us on our 

 arrivaic Imposing in size, clean in appearance, handsome 

 with regard to its buildings, steep with reference to its 

 streets, woj'm as t6 its temperature, civil, orderly, and gentle 

 as to its inhabitants: such were the epithets we at once 

 bestowed upon ]><isbon : and the good opinion we formed 

 of it at first we retained to the end of our visit, and still our 

 verdict is altogether in its favour, and we are quite pre- 

 pared to echo the praise bestowed upon it by its earliest 

 founders, when it was called ' Olisippo ' or '^ Oiisipo,* a 

 Phoenician term (as Pliny inform.s us), signifying 'Pleasant 

 bay/ which its Koman conquerors in the time of Augustus 

 exchanged for the scarcely less complimentary title of 

 *Felicitas Julia.' 



