half through the tablecloth is changed. The roast meats are placed upon the table already cut up and covered, and they are wont to put into these dishes and others, eggs, many spices, and sugar. The viands are not sumptuous, but are abundant, and they say most of the dishes are Moorish. They only serve one dish at a time, and this it is that makes their dinners last so long, whilst they pass the time chatting, drinking healths, and helping each other to what is brought to table, they being very gay the while.”[9] Of this splendour in the Evora of the past little is now apparent to the visitor, though the modern Barahona palace, of which, and its wealthy owner, the Eborenses seem very proud, could probably furnish forth a good twentieth-century equivalent for it; and behind the closed doors and frowning walls of many ancient noble palaces, now mostly in the hands of rich landowners and cultivators of the district, are doubtless luxurious interiors. From the Hotel Eborense, with its sixteenth-century outside staircase and trellised balcony-landing, looking upon a quaint, tree-shaded, little praça, I descend through narrow streets, that remind me of Toledo—streets that for the most part still bear historic names, though of course the inevitable “Serpa Pinto” has modernised one of them. Peace and stillness reign over all, for the sun stings shrewdly; and those who are obliged to be out linger drowsily under white walls and the frequent shade of acacias, cork-trees, and vine-trellises. A ruined church and a vast monastery attached, and now used as a barrack, first attract my attention, for the edifice shows signs of past magnificence, and the white, roofless walls and façade against the indigo sky form a beautiful picture even in their decay. An Augustinian monastery-church, that of Our Lady of Grace, I am told it is; and over the broken portico I read that it was built “_sub imp. Divi Joannis III., Patris Patriæ._” This John III. was the son of the “Fortunate” Manuel, and was one of the principal builders of Belem; so that we are justified in expecting something good from him in architecture. The expectation is not disappointed, for the work is a gem in its uncommon way. It is, indeed, but little touched with the Manueline taste of the time it was built (1524); and has more affinity with the fine cloister of John III. at Thomar, built by the same monarch. It is, in fact, almost the only specimen I have seen in Portugal of the pure Italian Renaissance in the style of Michael Angelo. Columns, trophies, shields, and decorative statuary, all tell the same story of direct Florentine influence, as apart from the less virile Raphaelesque tendency of the French Renaissance, which is much more common in Portugal, and, indeed, elsewhere. Even in the later decorations of this very church of Graça the graved medallions, festoons, and delicate panel carving in low relief, show that, even a few years after the church was built, the