Lisbon, like ancient Rome, is built on at least seven hills. It is
fitted by situation to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
Seated, or rather enthroned, on such a spot, commanding a magnificent
harbor, and overlooking one of the noblest rivers of Europe, it might be
more distinguished for external beauty than Athens in the days of her
freedom. Now, it seems rather to be the theatre in which the two great
powers of deformity and loveliness are perpetually struggling for the
mastery. The highest admiration and the most sickening disgust
alternately prevail in the mind of the beholder. Never was there so
strange an intermixture of the mighty and the mean—of the pride of
wealth and the abjectness of poverty—of the memorials of greatness and
the symbols of low misery—of the filthy and the romantic. I will dwell,
however, on the fair side of the picture; as I envy not those who
delight in exhibiting the frightful or the gloomy in the moral or
natural world. Often after traversing dark and wretched streets, at a
sudden turn, a prospect of inimitable beauty bursts on the eye of the
spectator. He finds himself, perhaps, on the brink of a mighty hollow,
scooped out by nature amidst hills, all covered to the top with
edifices, save where groves of the freshest verdure are interspersed; or
on one side a mountain rises into a cone far above the city, tufted with
woods, and crowned with some castellated pile, the work of other days.
The views fronting the Tagus are still more extensive and grand. On one
of these I stumbled a few evenings after my arrival, which almost
suspended the breath with wonder. I had labored through a steep and
narrow street almost choked with dirt, when a small avenue on one side,
apparently more open, tempted me to step aside to breathe the fresher
air. I found myself on a little plot of ground, hanging apparently in
the air, in the front of one of the churches. I stood against the column
of the portico absorbed in delight and wonder. Before me lay a large
portion of the city—houses descended beneath houses, sinking almost
precipitously to a fearful depth beneath me, whose frameworks, covered
over with vines of delicate green, broke the ascent like prodigious
steps, by which a giant might scale the eminence. The same “wilderness
of buildings” filled up the vast hollow, and rose by a more easy slope
to the top of the opposite hills, which were crowned with turrets,
domes, mansions, and regal pavilions of a dazzling whiteness. Beyond the
Tagus, on the southern shore, the coast rose into wild and barren hills,
wearing an aspect of the roughest sublimity and grandeur, and in the
midst, occupying the bosom of the great vale, between the glorious city
and the unknown wilds, lay the calm and majestic river, from two to
three miles in width, seen with the utmost distinctness to its mouth, on
each of which the two castles which guard it were visible, and spread
over with a thousand ships—onward, yet further, far as the eye could
reach, the living ocean was glistening, and ships, like specks of purest
white, were seen crossing it to and fro, giving to the scene an
imaginary extension, by carrying the mind with them to far distant
shores. It was the time of sunset, and clouds of the richest saffron
rested on the bosom of the air, and were reflected in softer tints in
the waters. Not a whisper reached the ear. “The holy time was quiet as a
nun breathless with adoration.” The scene looked like some vision of
blissful enchantment, and I scarcely dared to stir or breathe lest it
should vanish away.—_Talfourd._