Leaves from a Madeira Garden 



movement begins, in concert it is to be 

 hoped with the young King, it may sweep all 

 before it. 



But for Portugal, as for every country, there 

 is no permanent hope unless she can breed 

 great men — men not only fitted to deal with 

 a crisis which demands unusual qualities, but 

 strong and steadfast in the ordinary conduct of 

 affairs. She has bred them in the past, and 

 her sturdy, virile people may produce them 

 again. We who pinned our faith to Joao 

 Franco have had to stomach our disillusion. 

 Yet even the work that he did, the aspirations 

 which perhaps by wrong methods he tried to 

 realize, have left their effect. But Portugal 

 needs a Lincoln to set her political house in 

 order, a Gladstone to cleanse the stables of her 

 finance, a Bright to raise the moral level of 

 her public life. 



It is probable that the intense interest taken 

 in "politics" — a word of wider meaning, as I 

 have already suggested, than with us — is due 

 to the general dulness of life. Compared with 

 life, as we understand it in England, the 

 existence of these people is very empty. They 

 have little literature of their own, no art, no 



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