sovereign of Portugal, by right of succession, upon the death of his father. The regency established by the Emperor under his sister Maria, is in a short time to devolve upon Don Miguel, his brother, whom he has destined to become the husband of his daughter, Donna Maria da Gloria, now under age. During her minority, the Infant Don Miguel will, by the appointment of the Emperor, act as his lieutenant in the regency of the kingdom of Portugal and the Algarvas, conformably to the terms of the constitutional charter, and according to the form of the following

DECREE.

For many very weighty reasons which are worthy of my royal consideration, and reflecting that the safety and security of the state is and always ought to be the supreme law for every sovereign who desires only the happiness of his subjects, and taking into my royal consideration the intelligence, activity, and frankness, and character of the Infant Don Miguel, my much beloved and esteemed brother, I think fit to appoint him my Lieutenant, giving him all the powers which belong to me as King of Portugal and the Algarvas, and which are laid down in the Constitutional Charter, in order that he may govern these Kingdoms conformably with the said Charter. The same Infant Don Miguel, my beloved and esteemed brother, will see to the execution of this Decree.

(Signed by his Majesty)

Palace of Rio de Janeiro, July 3, 1827.

THE KING.

Donna Maria II., on attaining the age prescribed by the Emperor, and acknowledged by the Cortes as her majority, will assume full possession of the crown of Portugal, and reign conjointly with her husband Don Miguel. The two crowns of Portugal and Brasil will be by this arrangement entirely disunited.

The troublesome custom-house officers have just come on board, and are rudely importunate, by their gestures, to turn us passengers out of the ship and in the custody of a soldier, who seems more disposed to be civil than these bribedevouring consequential gentlemen of the look-out service.

My pen is at last, and to your relief, wrested from my hand; and the city of Lisbon, proudly crowning its many hills, is before me. We can think of nothing but Lord Byron's lines, as applicable to the moment:

What beauties doth Lisboa first unfold!

Her image floating on that noble tide,

Which poets vainly pave with sands of gold;
But now whereon a thousand keels did ride
Of mighty strength, since Albion was allied,
And to the Lusians did her aid afford:

A nation swoln with ignorance and pride,

Who lick, yet loathe, the hand that waves the sword
To save them from the wrath of Gaul's unsparing lord.

LAMP IN USE IN THE NORTH OF PORTUGAL.

NO 1010

LETTER III.

But whoso entereth within this town,
That, sheening far, celestial seems to be,
Disconsolate will wander up and down
'Mid many things unsightly to strange ee;
For hut and palace show like filthily:
The dingy denizens are reared in dirt;
Ne

personage of high or mean degree

Doth care for cleanness of surtout, or shirt,

Though shent with Egypt's plague, unkempt, unwashed, unhurt.

CHILDE HAROLD, canto 1.

Lisbon, 1827.

OUR vessel has been towed up to its moorings from Belem by men of war's boats, supplied from some of the British ships at anchor in the Tagus. Without being permitted a moment's delay, we have been hurried off into the police boat, and placed under the charge of two soldiers, who are to accompany us to the different offices, where it is necessary that our passports should be countersigned, and that we should undergo the always disagreeable operation of being toised and centimetred in the true style of the great nation, before it becomes lawful to seek a domicile.

At the moment we landed at the foot of the packet-stairs, a ludicrous instance of the infliction of summary punishment occurred, which afforded us great amusement. Some quarrel,

it would seem, had arisen between some native boatmen and a party of our jolly tars, who were waiting to take an officer off to his ship. The Portuguese had the temerity to strike one of the British seamen with an oar, when the whole boat's crew jumped aboard the Lusitanian, and trundled the Portuguese party into the water,-a case of no unusual occurrence, as we afterwards learned. The packet-stairs are so called, it is to be presumed, from there being no steps whatever to aid the tottering traveller up one of the steepest and most dangerous ascents about Lisbon. It is no better than a goat's path, so narrow and so perpendicular, that one slip of the feet might be the means of precipitating the inexperienced passenger upon the rocks beneath, and of causing him the fracture of his limbs, if not the loss of life. Its denomination is derived from its proximity to the anchorage ground of the Falmouth packets, which it completely commands. The palace of the Condé d'Obidos, to whom the surrounding property belongs, immediately overhangs this perilous height.

We soon found ourselves, after our marvellous escape, in the principal street of Lisbon, which, bearing different names, and winding over numerous inequalities of ground and in various directions, extends the whole length of the city, through a space of more than six miles along the banks of the Tagus. The heat had become intolerable, but yet for three hours we were bandied about from office to office, owing to the ignorance of our guards, and from one authority to another, until at length, in a state of perfect exhaustion, we were ushered up five pair of stairs into the chamber of an old écrivain, or notary public, who appeared in the last stage of consumption. Here we complied with all the necessary formalities about our passports, and, paying our fees, were conducted by the soldiers to our hotel in the Rua do Prior, in the quarter of Buenos Ayres, where we dismissed them with a small gratuity.

.

The custom-house officers on board the packet had refused us permission to take on shore any part of our baggage, and we were consequently put to the greatest inconvenience, not having even a change of linen with us; nor was it until late in the evening that our sacs de nuit were delivered up, through the interference of some friends, to whom we had brought letters of recommendation. Some excuse, however, for this rigorous treatment was certainly to be found in the recent detection of an attempt made by the steam-vessel from Gibraltar, to introduce a vast quantity of British manufactures in a clandestine manner, without payment of the usual duties. Consequently every English ship, from the moment of its arrival in the Tagus, was most strictly watched, and the cargo scrupulously examined. One could not, therefore, but acquiesce with good humour in the necessity of these strong and just measures of prevention for the sake of the revenue, however little of delicacy and management might be evinced in the mode adopted for their being carried into execution. Besides, it was gratifying to perceive, in these two instances of police and custom-house severity, experienced by an Englishman on landing in Portugal, while the British troops might almost be said to be composing, at the moment, the garrison of Lisbon, the uncontrolled freedom of the native authorities in the exercise of their respective functions, and therein the most satisfactory contradiction to the jealous falsehoods of Link and Hautefort, respecting the tyrannical predominancy of British influence over Lusitanian counsels. We were shown no favour; and surely, under the peculiar circumstances of the moment, it was not at all to be expected, nor indeed to be desired, that we should meet with more indulgence than the subjects of any other country, not connected with Portugal by such strict bonds of amity as ourselves.

The evening of our first day at Lisbon was rendered more remarkable by the arrival in the Tagus of the British experi