144 A SPRING TOUR IN PORTUGAL. 



on which I have nothing to remark beyond the fact, that 

 we witnessed a peculiar and very elaborate religious cere- 

 mony within the church of Santa Cruz, which was highly 

 decked for the occasion, and thronged with a crowd which 

 extended beyond the doors far into the street. 



Then we passed through the spacious Campo Santa 

 Anna, and made the pilgrimage on foot to the famous 

 sanctuary of Bom Jesus, distant one league from Braga, 

 and conspicuously perched on the top of a hill. This is 

 the great attraction for Portuguese pilgrims: no less re- 

 sorted to by the inhabitants of that country than the 

 shrine of S. lago of Compostella by Spaniards, the shrine 

 of Einsiedeln by the Swiss, and the House of our Lady of 

 Loreto by Italians ; indeed, it has been declared that no 

 devout Portuguese can die in peace unless he has, at 

 some period of his life, visited this national sanctuary. 



^\e had heard a great deal of the elaborate stations 

 leading up to the church, and of the representations, in 

 painted figures of wood as large as life, of the scenes of 

 our blessed Lord's Passion, as displayed in the several 

 chapels conducting up the hill to the summit ; and we had 

 expected to see a counterpart of the famous terra cotta 

 figures of a similar size and with a like object, which the 

 tourist amongst the southern slopes of the Alps recollects 

 on the Sacro Monte at Varallo in Piedmont : but when, 

 after a hot and dusty walk, we reached this highly extolled 

 sanctuary, whose merits the natives never cease to praise 

 with rapturous enthusiasm, we were as much surprised as 

 disappointed to find such wretched caricatures of the holy 

 scenes as were positively grotesque, and, but for the 

 reverence shown towards them by the people, would be 

 perfectly ridiculous. 



Now I am by no means disposed to cavil at any device 

 which may assist the devotion of the unlettered ; and I 

 conclude that these ill-formed, ill-dressed models serve the 



