The chapel is marred by the hard, bright German stained glass inserted
in the principal window by King Ferdinand; but the modern Portuguese is
very far from being critical in matters of art, and though hundreds of
people yearly toil up the mountain to venerate the holy image of the
Virgin of the Penha in this chapel, and the lovely ivory figure of St.
John in the sacristy, no one apparently thinks of removing the flashing
offence of the stained glass window in favour of some subdued medium
more appropriate to this beautiful little church. A climb to the highest
tower of the palace is said to be rewarded by a magnificent view. I was
content to take it on trust, for I had already climbed high enough, and
could hardly hope to behold a more striking prospect than those I had
enjoyed from the castle battlements, and from the inner _patio_ of the
palace itself, which is perhaps the most striking of them all.
As I retrace my steps down the long zigzags to Cintra again, and ever
and anon look up at the heights from which I have come, they seem quite
inaccessible. Equally, or more so, does the somewhat lower, but even
more precipitous eminence called the Cruz Alta, from which the prospect
is of surpassing extent over land and sea.
“Eis campinas que ao ceo seu canto elevam,
Aqui o espaço, alem a immensidade,”
“Behold the plains their psalms raise to the sea,
Here spread below in space, beyond immensity,”
as the Portuguese poem on the base of the cross proclaims.