PORTUGAL.*

Ma. OSWALD ORAWIPURD has an advantage over most writers= who deal with the affairs of foreign countries, iu that he has an intimate acquaintance with the country of which he writes, and a practical knowledge of the subject of which he treats. He compares his book in his introduction to the olla, so familiar to travellers both in Spain and Portugal, but although he seems to claim for it no higher consideration than that of a "medley," he expresses an opinion that the work will not be found " dis- jointed." It would, perhaps, be hard to say that a stew was under any circumstances disjointed ; but as the book is chiefly made up of the author's contributions to well-known magazines,. and treats of such widely different subjects as the rise of Portugal and the manufacture of port-wine, the merits of Madeira as a winterage and the Roman remains near Setubal, the author's comparison to the olla is sufficiently happy ; and if the whole is not blended with the skill of an Ude or a Francatelli, we can assure the reader that the materials are as excellent as they are diversified.

The three first chapters, extending over a hundred pages, are devoted to the early history of Portugal, especially its rise and development under Affonso Henriquez ; to a sketch of what the author calls the Portuguese Renaissance, and to a brief notice of mediaeval Portuguese literature in genepl. These chapters might have been written by any student of the history and literature of Portugal ; but the succeeding pages treating of Portuguese farming and country life could, perhaps, have, been hardly given to us by any other English author than Mr. Crawfurd. For he not only knows the country intimately, but he is himself a practical farmer of ten years' standing, and he gives us the result of his personal experience, as well as his personal observation.

The fourth chapter, on country life, contains a most trenchant denunciation of the absurdity of the observation which Mr. Crawfurd has so frequently heard made by " foolish," " ignorant," and " erroneous " speakers, that " Portugal is a country a hundred and fifty years behind the rest of the world." The ignorance of those who hold such opinions extends not only,. in the author's eyes, to the affairs of Portugal, but to those of all other European countries, from the year 1730 to 1880, inclusive. We confess, therefore, that we were somewhat surprised, after reading further on that "agriculture is the prevailing pursuit of Portuguese life," to come upon the following sentence :- " Farming in Portugal is, as 1 must admit, at a stand- still, and it has moved very little for some fourteen hundred years. There is, consequently, immense room for improvement." Of course, it is very difficult to say, with any degree of accuracy, how many years any one country is behind any other, still more behind all others ; nor is it a question upon which any two people, however great their

• Portugal,Old and New. By Oswald Crawford, 13.1L's Consul at Oporto. With Maps and Illustrations. London : C. Kagan Paul and Co. 1880.

knowledge and experience of one or many countries, would be likely to agree. But farmers in all countries are apt to be dogmatic, and Mr. Crawford lets us see that he has very strong and decided opinions upon a variety of subjects, chiefly political, and by no means confined to Portugal. These, how- ever, are but the garlic and pimento that one must expect to

find in an olla.

The land-tenures of Portugal are very remarkable, and in these days, when our own land-tenures are exciting

AO much interest and discussion, they may be worth the attention of political students. The mitayer system is not uncommon, but the most curious and the most com- mon tenure in Portugal is a form of copyhold tech- nically termed emphyleatic, to whose nature and incidents Mr. Crawford devotes half a dozen pages. The Portu- guese gentleman's ideal of a country house is the old Roman one of a villa, and his residence in it a villeggiatara, after the modern Italian fashion,—a brief holiday-time in the hot season, a voluntary rustication, which has as little in common with the residence of oar English country gentlemen upon their family estates, as an English shooting party in well preserved coverts resembles the Portuguese capada, so humor- ously described by Mr. Crawfurd :- " The Portuguese sportsman's motto, if he have one, is, The greatest amusement of the greatest number (of men and dogs) ;' and as the whole country, with the exception of walled enclosures of a certain height, is free to shoot over to any one responsible enough to be entrusted with a ten-shilling gun-licence, there is a paucity of game, and so to the sportsman's motto must be added,—' with the least possible expenditure of game.'"

The account of the days' sport in which the author was con- cerned, in which "a dozen gentlemen agreed to bring their dogs together, and a pack numbering thirty or forty of all degrees—larchers, terriers, greyhounds, and even pointers —was collected," is simply delicious. " Another dozen friends and acquaintances joined the party. Among the whole of the gentlemen, six or eight only carried guns."

How, after failing to stalk a blackbird, the whole party missed a rabbit, and shot a boy ; and how, finally, a hare was " found on her form, and she had not, I am sure, left it two yards before she was coursed and caught by the greyhounds, attacked by the lurchers, and shot by every one who had a gun, —consequently, she was killed before she had given any sport whatever;" and finally, how, the hare having been pulled in pieces by contending dogs, a new chase began, is told with in- finite spirit, humour, and an abundance of " local colour "

Some of us tried to recover the body, some chased the head. We were very much out of breath before we again got together the two portions of the hare. Bring the needle and thread !' was called out—the needle and thread ! necessities in this kind of sport, where the game is set upon by such packs. They were brought. The de- capitated quarry was cleverly sewn together, the fur smoothed down, and then gravely insinuated into a narrow linen bag, also brought for the occasion."

But the most curious part of all this is that Mr. Crawford infinitely prefers this Portuguese form of shooting-party, to what he characterises as being, " by general consent, the very dullest, most monotonous, and most unsatisfactory form of sport in the world,"—namely, English shooting.

In England, indeed, we have no siesta, an afternoon repose which Mr. Crawford, with that love of dogmatic originality

that distinguishes his writings, declares to be necessary in all hot countries, not on account of the heat, but of the flies,—an opinion with which we can no more agree than the opinion that the cham- pagne drunk by our English colliers, during the palmy days of coal at 403. a ton, which many of us remember in 1873, "was all in the interests of morality, sobriety, and hard work !" Speaking of wine, we cannot pass over Mr. Crawfurd's admir- able chapter upon port without a word of praise. There is nothing " disjointed" in it. It is complete as a whole, and it is, moreover, full of knowledge, of learning, of experience, and of good-sense. We will not anticipate by extracts, which would necessarily be imperfect, the pleasure and profit which the reader of Mr. Crawfurd's work will derive from the study of this chapter. But the moral would seem to be twofold,— first, you cannot do better than drink port-wine ; second, you must not expect to get it pure.

But Mr. Crawford is not only enthusiastic about the great

Portuguese wine. More solid fare comes in for a share of his notice :— "Baealhau is a word and a thing that philologers have wrangled about, politicians fought over, financiers rejoiced in, merchants con- tended for, fishermen fished for, economists been puzzled about, while

the Por tuguese people generally have quietly eaten it with oil and pepper."

This bacalkau, which is merely dried cod-fish, is, according to the author's experience, `! an object more resembling, in colour,

size, shape, and hardness, a short piece of one-inch red deal board, than any article of human food" he "was ever before helped to." He further tells us that a rather serious objection to its use as a food is "that it is not nice to eat," which scarcely surprises us, and yet he says :-

" If I could persuade my countrymen to use this most valuable food as the Spaniards and Portuguese do, it is my firm conviction that I should be doing more for their material advancement than most average patriotic statesmen accomplish in a lifetime."

But we are inclined to think, from our acquaintance with Mr. Crawfurd's writings, that his ideal of the average patriotic

statesman is somewhat low. If we are not prepared to endorse all our author's suggestions, there is no doubt that

they give a flavour to the olla that he has prepared for us. There is plenty of solid meat in the hotchpot, and vinegar, as well as port-wine, in the broth ; and if from time to time we come across a bit of garlic or red pepper, we feel that it helps to give character to the whole.