The cloisters of the monastery vie with those of Batalha in beauty, which is saying much. Each of the twenty arches, four on each face and one at each corner, is filled with Manueline tracery, exhibiting inexhaustible caprice and invention, no two being alike in pattern; whilst highly decorated Manueline doorways line the inner walls. The upper ambulatory is wider and, if possible, more elaborate than the lower, an unusual arrangement, each upper arch buttress being capped by a beautifully decorated finial. The chapter-house, as usual, leads out of the cloister, an exquisitely rich specimen of Manueline, and is now devoted to the stately tomb of Alexandre Herculano, the nineteenth-century Portuguese historian. Pompous as are the sepulchres of kings and heroes in the adjoining church, this monument to the historian—a respectable figure in literature, it is true, but by no means a genius of universal fame—surpasses them all. Here, alone in the midst of this grandiose chapter-house of the monks, the dead man-of-letters rests more splendidly than monarch or millionaire. Modern Portugal, at least, can honour the gifted pen; for the names of Camões, of Almeida-Garrett, the nineteenth-century poet, and Herculano, the historian, are all through the country commemorated by street names. How long shall we have to wait before Englishmen, so ready to bow the knee before successful finance, will thus do homage to an historian? Verily, little as we may relish the truth, we have much to learn from Portugal, and not in this alone. The monastery buildings of Belem shelter twelve hundred orphan boys, who are there clothed, fed, and educated by the State, and it was a fine sight to witness them all at table in the great Manueline refectory of the vanished monks, and pleasant to hear the ringing of their youthful laughter as they played joyously in the stately cloisters. In the museum adjoining there is a collection of ancient royal coaches, some of them very imposing and curious, but generally speaking not so interesting a collection as that in the royal _caballerizas_ at Madrid. Sated almost with sculptural richness, I left the monastery, and rested beneath the grateful shade of palms in the public garden opposite, with the broad Tagus before me and the glowing blue sky overhead until the perfect day began to wane. Then through the fine Praça de Dom Fernando, with its handsome Manueline pillar and statue of Albuquerque, the great viceroy of the Indies, I slowly wended my way back by the chaotic river-bank to Lisbon. Belem is beautiful and suggestive enough to provide reflection for one day without allowing other impressions to disturb it, and the sordid sights and sounds of the water-side were nothing to me, for the airy fancies of the artist in stone and the romantic memories of the heroic days surrounded me as with a mantle.