Rejoining the road, we for awhile lost sight of the valley. When we again came in view of it, it was rapidly filling with clouds, but at first their interposition was hardly a disadvantage; they gave a vague indefinite grandeur to the cliffs and mountains, which seemed to rise one knew not from what depth, and lose their summits in regions beyond our ken. The breaks, too, that occurred in this shrouding of the scene, showed fragments of it with strange effect--till at length the whole hollow filled, and presented a uniform sea of vapour. _Rambles in Madeira_. * * * * * A PORTUGUESE BALL. The ladies are carried in palanquins, and each received at the street entrance by the master of the house--or if there be more than one lady, by some gentlemen deputed for that purpose--who takes her hand, and so ushers her up stairs. There is much of this elaborate gallantry observable in the manner of the Portuguese towards the sex. Thus, a man never passes a lady in the street, or in her balcony, without taking off his hat, and this whether he be acquainted with her or not. We understand they used to offer a similar mark of respect to the English ladies, but desisted on finding that our gentlemen did not reciprocate in the same homage towards the fair _Portuguezas_. I don't think that this difference in the manners of the two people does us credit. Not that all that kind of homage means much. In this, as in a more serious concern, our southern neighbours may seem to have the advantage in the practices of external devotion; but it would be a mistake to infer from thence, that there is with us less of that service of the heart, which, after all, is the one thing needful. The party was large, probably two hundred, including most of the native rank and fashion of the island. We found the ladies all seated together in one room, and the effect of this concentration was sufficiently dazzling. Some people deny that there is any standard of female beauty; and, at any rate, there is no doubt but that habits and associations, as well as complexional and sentimental considerations, interfere more with our perceptions in respect to this than any other object of taste. It is not immediately that we enter into the merits of a style of beauty very different from that which we have been accustomed to. Perhaps it is owing to this circumstance that I was not struck by so many instances of individual attractiveness as might have been expected in so crowded a galaxy. The traits that first strike a stranger in a Portuguese belle, are the tendency to _embonpoint_ in the figure, and to darkness--I had almost said swarthiness, in complexion. This last character, however, is not particularly obvious by candle-light; and it is always relieved by the most raven hair, and eyes such as one seldom sees elsewhere, so large and black; if their fire were softened by a longer lash, and their expression less fixed, there would be no resisting them.