SECOND JOURNEY. 



85 



amid tlie variegated scenes around the pretty village of 

 Monteiro. In the evening groups sitting at the door, 

 he may sometimes see with a sigh how wealth and the 

 prince's favour cause a booby to pass for a Solon, and 

 be reverenced as such, while perhaps a poor neglected 

 Camoens stands silent at a distance, awed by the 

 dazzling glare of wealth and power. Eetired from the 

 public road he may see poor Maria sitting under a palm- 

 tree, with her elbow in her lap, and her head leaning 

 on one side within her hand, weeping over her for- 

 bidden bans. And as he moves on " with wandering 

 step and slow," he may hear a broken-hearted nymph 

 ask her faithless swain, — 



" How could you say my face was fair, 

 And yet that face forsake ? 

 How could you win my virgin heart, 

 Yet leave that heart to break?" 



One afternoon, in an unfrequented part not far from 

 Monteiro, these adventures were near being brought to 

 a speedy and a final close : six or seven blackbirds, with 

 a white spot betwixt the shoulders, were making a 

 noise, and passing to and fro on the lower branches of 

 a tree in an abandoned, weed-grown, orange orchard. 

 In the long grass underneath the tree, apparently a pale 

 green grasshopper was fluttering, as though it had got 

 entangled in it. When you once fancy that the thing 

 you are looking at is really what you take it for, the 

 more you look at it the more you are convinced it is so. 

 In the present case, this was a grasshopper beyond all 

 doubt, and nothing more remained to be done but to 

 wait in patience till it had settled, in order that you 

 might run no risk of breaking its legs in attempting to 

 lay hold of it while it was fluttering — it still kept 

 fluttering ; and having quietly approached it, intending 



