boulders to the town being almost sheer, and on the south-east a great bay opens, and the mouth of the Tagus bounds the prospect. As I gazed, entranced at this wonderful scene, surrounded by yet sturdy relics of the war of civilisations eight centuries old; musing upon the immutability of nature’s face in comparison with even the most enduring works of man, I noticed a wire fixed on the face of the Moorish battlement, and thence to a boulder, and so from point to point, I know not whither—to the palace or the adjoining peak, perhaps. A telegraph wire! A familiar object enough, but, as it seemed to me, strangely out of harmony with the stern battlements from which for centuries the sons of the prophet held back the advance of Western civilisation. The point upon which the Moorish stronghold stands is connected with the higher site of the palace by a saddle-back dipping considerably and then rising very precipitously. The vegetation on all sides is marvellously luxuriant, and inside the well-kept gardens of the royal domain flowers and plants, temperate and sub-tropical, make the place a horticultural paradise. Through graceful Moorish archways, bright with Alambresque decorations and _azulejos_, under rocky tunnels and over mediæval drawbridges, all redolent of the gimcrack taste of the forties, the upward way leads at length to the little inner _patio_ of the castle, and here, at last, some of the Manueline monastery still remains. It is little enough, a window here and a door there, and is almost swamped by modern Alambresque and German baronial additions, but the ancient chapel in the _patio_ is a gem. The beautiful groined ceiling especially attracts attention, but the pride of the place is the exquisite altar of translucent alabaster or jasper and black marble in the purest style of the classical Renaissance, dated 1532, a thank-offering of King John III. for the birth of an heir. The many groups of figures in alabaster are extremely beautiful, and as the whole structure turns upon a pivot the perfection of the work can be seen in various lights. A concession to the Portuguese Manueline taste of the time is made by the pendent festoons on each side of the altar, which are formed of two lengths of knotted and twisted cable in alabaster, a _tour de force_ of execution, though rigid purists may perhaps question their artistic appropriateness.