"The place, though roofed with a vaulted ceiling, was so spacious and lofty that at first they took it for an immeasurable plain. But their eyes at length growing familiar with {288} the grandeur of surrounding objects, they extended their view to those at a distance, and discovered rows of columns and arcades which gradually diminished till they terminated in a point radiant as the sun when he darts his last beams athwart the ocean.... The pavement, which was strewed over with gold-dust and saffron, exhaled so subtle an odor as almost overpowered them.... In the midst of this immense hall a vast multitude was incessantly passing, who severally kept their right hands on their hearts, without once regarding anything around them. They had all the livid paleness of death. Their eyes deep sunk in their sockets, resembled those phosphoric meteors that glimmer by night in places of interment." And afterward, when a royal sufferer, who from livid lips had made warning exhortation to these wanderers, lifts his right hand in supplication, Vathek sees--through his bosom which was "transparent as crystal"--his heart enveloped in flames. Perhaps Hawthorne, in certain passages of the _Scarlet Letter_, may have had these red, burning hearts of this famous Hall of Eblis in mind. Beckford wrote also a very interesting account of certain religious houses in Portugal which were the wonder of old days and are a wonder now. At Cintra, the picturesque suburb of Lisbon, he {289} established a great Moorish country house within sight of the sea. Byron gives a glimpse of this in _Childe Harold_:-- "Here didst thou dwell, here schemes of pleasure plan, Beneath yon mountain's ever beauteous brow; But now, as if a thing unblest by man, Thy fairy dwelling is as lone as thou! Here giant weeds a passage scarce allow To halls deserted, portals gaping wide. Fresh lessons to the thinking bosom, how Vain are the pleasaunces on earth supplied, Swept into wrecks anon by Time's ungentle tide." Byron would now have to mend his description, since the estate is at present owned by a London merchant, who has bought a title from the weak king-folk of Portugal, and keeps the great house in Pimlico order. It is one of the show places of Cintra; and if Moorish domes, and marble halls, and sculpture delicate as that of the Alhambra, and fountains, and palms, and oranges, and bowers of roses, and century-old oaks, and cliffs, and wooded dells, and far-off sight of sails from the Bay of Biscay are deserving of show, surely this old palace of the rich Englishman is.