“Ah! Cintra, blest abode, The throne of budding spring, Who loves thee not: and who Can e’er forget in life An hour passed in thy lap?” When the stronghold on the crest of the mountain was securely held by the Moslem soldiery, before the great Affonso Henriques swept southward with the Cross victorious, the Moorish kings of Lisbon lived in silken ease below in their summer alcazar in the praça of Cintra—a building this full of interest still, though injudicious or inexperienced travellers have caused no little disappointment by comparing it unjustifiably with the splendid Arab remains at Seville, Granada, and Toledo. Truth to say, the palace at Cintra is no Alhambra, and should not be approached with expectations of anything of the sort. And yet the place is very quaint and charming as you enter the courtyard from the praça, hard by the Manueline cross with its spiral shaft. The front of the palace appears to be purely Manueline, the elaborate window and door decoration, consisting of twisted cables and intertwined branches, and even the pillars, spouts, and gargoyles are all redolent of Portugal’s age of heroic expansion and wealth under the “Fortunate” king. It was a regal Christian palace long before his time; for his great-grandfather, John the Great and his wife Philippa of Lancaster, had adapted the Moorish alcazar for their summer residence and made it their favourite palace, their grandson and successor Affonso being born here. But it was in the palmy times of Dom Manuel that the palace of Cintra became the centre of culture, wit, and poetry, where gaily-clad courtiers listened to the wondrous tales of Portuguese explorers returned from Africa and the Indies, and poets sang the national epics telling of the opening of the mystic East with its wealth untold to Portuguese commerce and dominion. Though the outside of the palace is Portuguese Manueline, the interior exhibits at every step portions of the original Moorish edifice unaltered. The vast kitchen, with its enormous champagne-bottle chimneys in the centre, has never ceased to be available for culinary uses from the time of the Arab kings until to-day; whilst the dining-room is pure Moorish, lined with beautiful Arab tiles. Arab tiles, indeed, remain in many rooms, and the chancel of the chapel, once of course a mosque, is exquisitely paved with them. There is a beautiful little Moorish _patio_ too, with its marble fountain and laurels, that might be a portion of a palace at Fez or Mequinez now, so pure and intact is it. The older rooms of the palace generally are dark, for the Moorish architects shut out the sun wherever possible, and the up and down floors on all sorts of queer levels impress upon one the immense antiquity of the place as a dwelling-house.