This is not the place to tell of the administration of the Marques de
Pombal, who rose to eminence owing to the great ability he showed after
this awful calamity, or to give a history of how he expelled the
Jesuits, subdued the nobles, attempted to make Portugal a manufacturing
country, abolished slavery and the differences between the _Old_ and the
_New Christians_, reformed the administration and the teaching of the
University of Coimbra, and robbed the Inquisition of half its terrors by
making its trials public. In Lisbon he rebuilt the central part of the
town, laying out parallel streets, and surrounding the Praça do
Commercio with great arcaded government offices; buildings remarkable
rather for the fine white stone of which they are made, than for any
architectural beauty. Indeed it is impossible to admire any of the
buildings erected in Portugal since the earthquake; the palaces of the
Necessidades and the Ajuda are but great masses of pink-washed plaster
pierced with endless windows, and without any beauty of detail or of
design.
[Sidenote: Lisbon, Estrella.]
Nor does the church of the Coração de Jesus, usually called the
Estrella, call for any admiration. It copies the faults of Mafra, the
tall drum, the poor dome, and the towers with bulbous tops.
[Sidenote: Oporto, Torre dos Clerigos.]
More vicious, indeed, than the Estrella, but much more original and
picturesque, is the Torre dos Clerigos at Oporto, built by the clergy in
1755. It stands at the top of a steep hill leading down to the busiest
part of the town. The tower is a square with rounded corners, and is of
very considerable height. The main part is four stories in height, of
which the lowest is the tallest and the one above it the shortest. All
are adorned with pilasters or pilaster strips, and the third, in which
is a large belfry window, has an elaborate cornice, rising over the
window in a rounded pediment to enclose a great shield of arms. The
fourth story is finished by a globe-bearing parapet, within which the
tower rises to another parapet much corbelled out. The last or sixth
story is set still further back and ends in a fantastic dome-shaped
roof. In short, the tower is a good example of the wonderful and
ingenious way in which the eighteenth-century builders of Portugal often
contrived the strangest results by a use--or misuse--of pieces of
classic detail, forming a whole often more Chinese than Western in
appearance, but at the same time not unpicturesque.[171]
[Sidenote: Oporto, Quinta do Freixo.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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