HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY COUNT OF SANTA EULALIA GIFT OF JOHN & STETSON, Jri OCT 26 1921 (The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved) PREFACE. THIS book is partly made up of contributions to the 'Fortnightly Review,' the 'New Quarterly Magazine,' and the Cornhill Magazine.' I have modified these papers greatly, interpolated much new matter, corrected where my knowledge has increased, and in many, I may say in most parts, I have altogether rewritten my first essays. I have called my book 'Portugal: Old and New,' hoping thereby to make the title as descriptive as I could. I trust the name may not be thought pretentious, or the book altogether a nondescript, or the chapters of it disjointed. I am afraid the title may to some critics seem to promise a great deal more than I have performed. Portugal, Old and New, may indeed be taken to mean an account of all that Portugal has been and all that she now is; but this of course would be an impossible expectation to fulfil with a work in one volume. I hope the reader expects nothing from me so exhaustive or so ponderous. My book is so far nondescript that it is neither a book of history, nor of criticism, nor of pure description; nor an antiquarian work, nor a social nor a statistical one, nor a book of travel; but it is a medley of all these things; and yet, if I have only succeeded in carrying out my conception, it is not disjointed. In the inns of the more uncivilised parts of this Peninsula it is common to offer to the traveller, not a dinner of separate courses, but one where they are mingled and compounded into a single dish. A large, deep pipkin is set before him, in which meat and game and fowl of all available kinds, vegetables of every variety, pot-herbs and garnishing and spices, have been seethed all together. Into this pipkin, or Olla, the guest dips a spoon at a venture, and, perhaps half-famished with long fasting and eager for meat or game, he is disappointed at drawing forth nothing more satisfying than a piece of yellow gourd or a scarlet capsicum. On the other hand, the fastidious traveller, trifling with his Olla and diving for the lightest sustenance, may get a more substantial morsel of beef or bacon than he cares for. The reader of my book may, I fear, meet with illluck of the same kind. There is reading in it that may seem over-heavy for some tastes, and reading that may seem too light for the tastes of others. As a sample of solid ingredients there is the chapter on the great Warrior King of Portugal, and this perhaps is very heavy reading; but then, not to know about him is to be ignorant of all that concerns the rise of Portugal into the category of nations. Before Affonso Henriquez there was no Portugal at all. Since he lived and died, and because he lived, there has been |