A8 SWABEY DIARY. 
“concerns” are of various degrees and can only be described by the 
pencil, but some of the principal people have a chaise with four wheels 
and glass windows drawn by four horses. The drivers are the greatest 
part of the curiosity, in cocked hats, long queues, and high military 
boots, but, to do them justice they drive well, though slowly; indeed, 
the hills in the streets oblige them to acquire this habit, and as the 
pavement is all of what is called with us Scotch pebbles, Mr. Buxton’s 
rapidity would soon pitch a barouche on its beam ends. I drove ina 
hired carriage to avoid the heat, which is intense and unremitting. 
These are like hackney coaches, and are to be had when it does not 
rain, which it has not done here for four months. 
The billet Willis is in, is the common run of a gentleman’s house 
here, and consists of a small bedroom within a sitting-room, full as 
usual of fleas and all detestable vermin, so that it is next to impossible 
to sleep. The two or three men who remained to be with me and the 
guns were so annoyed in the barracks that they preferred lying out 
under their carriages. I went to-day to the Marquis of Pombal’s 
house, now the residence of Mr. Stewart, our Chargé de Affairs, a 
quarter where the houses, as is usual among those of the nobility, are 
very grandly painted and ornamented with gilt and glasses, some of 
them being entirely flat and yet appearing to be carved, from the 
excellence of the canvas painting, and this one is the best, because the 
most recently-built nobleman’s house in Lisbon, and has a tolerable - 
stone staircase. The paintings and ornaments, generally, are in imi- 
tation of marble, and some parts are beautifully paved with the same 
sort of tile that we have in an English dairy, but superior, and having a 
good effect. In the houses in general, for instance the one where the 
Artillery mess, the fault consists in its having no staircase or passage, 
one room opens into another through a door in the corner, and so on. 
The rooms themselves are magnificent, though not always arranged 
with taste, and never with comfort. 
Some of the men are fine, stout, fellows, and generally have fine eyes 
and good teeth. With the exception of the labourers, one can scarcely 
discriminate between the degrees of people, most of them wearing 
rusty cocked hats, some with servants behind them. I have not yet 
learned the difference between monks and friars,! &c., but there are 
many of them idling in the streets. I should observe that the extreme 
number of cripples and most oddly deformed persons is quite sur- 
prising, and I am told that the mothers even deform their children 
by way of ensuring them a provision by charity. ‘he aged are numer- 
ous—so mnch so, that I am inclined to think that people decline here 
early in life. There are no hospitals, except the temporary military 
ones, to be seen. ‘hey have a regiment of police tolerably soldier-like 
in their appearance, and the other regiments that I meet are as well 
as can be expected. I saw a string of recruits chained together under 
an escort, these they called volunteers for the army, but they do not 
release them till they reach the depot. . . . . . . 
1A friar is a brother of any religious order, but especially of the four mendicant orders, viz. : 
Franciscans (gray friars), Augustines, Dominicans (black friars), Carmelites (white friars). Monks 
and friars are equally bound to vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.—F.4.W. 
