The Museum of Fine Arts at Lisbon possesses, it is true, few objects of importance, apart from the goldsmith’s work and ecclesiastical embroidery, and the lack of a catalogue of the paintings—except for the collection given to the nation by Count de Carvalhido—stands in the way of their enjoyment. Most that is worth seeing here in pictorial art comes from the suppressed religious houses and churches, especially the early Flemish and German paintings, of which several are really fine. But the collection of ancient pictures is so lamentable in condition as a whole, and so badly lit, as to make the study of them difficult. Count de Carvalhido’s large collection, which is separately housed in two rooms in the Museum, contains a few good pictures and many by obscure artists quite the reverse, the specimens of the Flemish and Germanic schools predominating. The attribution of the works to named painters is often quite wide of the mark, many pictures bearing no resemblance whatever to the style of their alleged authors. There is, for instance, a little panel attributed to Sir Thomas Lawrence. It is called “Seduction,” and represents, in the usual eighteenth-century French genre style, an interior with a young man seated at an open escritoire offering jewels and money to a girl, whilst an old woman watches through a half-closed door. Anything more unlike Lawrence, either in technique or subject, it would be difficult to conceive. Another picture, a large canvas attributed to Zaniberti, an Italian painter, who died in 1636, represents a Carnival in Rome with a large number of maskers and spectators, all of whom are dressed in the fashion of the late eighteenth century, a hundred and fifty years after Zaniberti’s death. But the wealth of church and altar plate more than makes up for the shortcomings of the picture galleries. Monstrances in gold of great antiquity and beauty, covered with precious stones, are to be seen literally by the dozen. Silver gilt processional crosses of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, some almost Byzantine, some nearly Mudejar in design, abound; chalices of unimaginable richness in pure Gothic and Manueline styles, reliquaries in gold and gems beyond price, and gold and enamelled crowns and girdles, altar crosses, and candlesticks without number, are displayed in cases in a suite of rooms commanding a fine view over the Tagus. Alcobaça has contributed the lion’s share of these treasures, but Batalha and many other religious houses have been placed under involuntary contribution; and the result is a collection of early ecclesiastical art in gold and silver that I have never seen approached elsewhere. The church vestments, too, are rich and numerous beyond description; and a large series of beautifully embroidered court dresses of the eighteenth century displays the influence exerted by the Portuguese connection with the far East upon artistic embroidery of the period.