1828.] Portugal Tllustrated. 169 
© The opera-house is a fine building, with a handsome portico, situated in 
the square, from which it takes its name. It required only five months for 
its erection in 1793. The corridors throughout are vaulted, as the staircases 
also, which lead to the séveral tiers of boxes ; while the vomitories are so nu- 
merous and so skilfully distributed, that the interior of the theatre, in case of 
fire, can be instantaneously cleared. 
“The royal box occupies the entire segment of the circle, cutting perpen- 
dicularly the five tiers of boxes, which gives it an elevated and imposing 
appearance. There are one hundred and twenty boxes ; and the pit here, as 
at Paris and elsewhere, reserved for the accommodation of male spectators, 
may contain about seven hundred persons; the price of admission being to 
this part of the theatre half a crusado novo, and for a box on the lower and 
principal tier, sufficiently capacious to contain five or six chairs, half a moi- 
dore, or about ten shillings. The operas are given on the nights of Monday, 
Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday,—generally commencing about half past 
eight, and concluding before twelve. The ladies appear not to dress for the 
opera, excepting upon the appearance of some new actor, or at the representa- 
tion of a novel piece. The custom of the actors stopping to acknowledge the 
applause of the audience, even in the delivery of an heroic speech, quite 
destroys the illusion of the whole scene.” 
These details are something meagre, which is not very surprising ; 
inasmuch as the author (if we understand him rightly in another place) 
was not acquainted with the language in which the performances were 
carried on. Near the first mentioned house, the Salitre, which is a sort 
of “ Minor” institution, equal to our own Circus or Sadler’s Wells, stands 
the amphitheatre for the Bull Fights, which are exhibited on the Sunday 
afternoon. This national entertainment our traveller thought it right 
not to see-—“ The cruelty of the sports,” he says, “ and the sacred cha- 
racter of the day, are quite sufficient for English travellers to leave Por- 
tuguese taste in the full and undisturbed enjoyment of all its pleasures.” 
The native Portuguese of the higher classes, are not so fortunate as to 
be agreeable to Mr. Kinsey in their personal appearance. It is true that 
they are not (in all probability) the immediate descendants of Adonis ; 
but the following description strikes us strained and extravagant, rather 
than ludicrous :— 
« And what, you will demand, of these said lords of the creation at Lisbon? 
—Why, the fact is, that if the English gentleman who once received from a 
stranger in London a gold snuff-box, in acknowledgment of his greater nasal 
pretensions, which he was to transfer to the honour of any proboscis more red, 
ugly, and extensive than his own, that he might casually chance to meet, had 
come off straightway to Lisbon, the said box he must in justice have resigned 
upon the first step of the abominable packet-stairs. 
-“ Of all animals in creation, the Lisbon dandy, or fashionable Lusita- 
nian swell, is by far the lowest in the scale of mere existence. I have been 
haunted in my dreams by visions of ugliness since the first time I beheld a 
small, squat, puffy figure,—what was it? could it be of a man?—incased 
within a large pack-saddle, upon the back of a lean, high-boned, straw-fed, 
cream-coloured nag, with an enormously flowing tail, whose length and 
breadth would appear to be each night guarded from discoloration by careful 
inyolution above the hocks. Taken, from his gridiron spurs and long pointed 
boots, up his broad blue-striped pantaloons, @ la Cossaque, to the thrice folded 
piece of white linen on which he is seated in cool repose ; thence by his cable 
chain, bearing seals as large as a warming-pan, and a key like an anchor ; 
then a little higher, to the figured waistcoat of early British manufacture, and 
the sack-shapened coat, up to the narrow-brim sugar-loaf hat on his head,— 
where can be found his equal? Nor does he want a nose, as big as the gnomon 
M.M. New Series.—Vou. V. No. 32. 
