But of the separate works of Crabbe we have said enough; as much as space will permit, as much as a tolerably complete estimate requires. The fame of Crabbe's poetry rests on a secure foundation, though his popularity will probably never again swell to the full and copious flood it enjoyed during the latter part of his lifetime: the form of verse in which he mostly wrote, appears to have lost its attractions, and his harsh music has been drowned in a chorus of finer and sweeter, if not more powerful voices. The circumstances attending his first appearances were abundantly and exceptionally favourable; but the grand outburst of poetic life in those who came immediately after him dimmed his glory and curtailed his sovereignty. "The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo," and when Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley had sung, the homely strain of Crabbe appeared more homely than ever. But his poetry holds, nevertheless, its own peculiar place in English literature. It possesses not only vigour and truth, but a real, bold, and striking originality. It is a genuine growth. Crabbe was true to his own feelings and experiences, and that fact imparts to his work all the interest and value attaching to what is first-hand, and not imitative. The highest achievement of a poet is to create consistent human characters, such as we can understand and sympathise with. Judged by this canon, Crabbe's place should be high; for he has created many. The defects and faults of his work are sufficiently obvious. His diction and style are often commonplace and prosaic, not seldom even harsh and painful; he wastes his great powers of description upon unworthy objects, and his attempts to arouse pity and indignation too frequently excite disgust. His readers must be prepared to sup full of horrors, to be repelled occasionally by misplaced and feeble jocularity, to be weighed down throughout by the strength of the poet's conviction that "man was made to mourn.' But all these drawbacks, serious as they are, give way before the real force and striking originality of genius in this annalist of the Poor: they can only slightly tarnish, they cannot destroy, the excellence of his literal, humorous, moral, and homely-tragic' muse.

A

CROSSING THE ESTRELLA.

A REMINISCENCE OF TRAVEL IN PORTUGAL.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "FAIR LUSITANIA."

BOUT three years ago, when lawless bands of Carlists were ravaging Spain, numerous Spanish families crossed the frontier into Portugal, and many of them took that opportunity of visiting various parts of a country which, though next neighbour to their own, they knew little, or, in fact, nothing of. The surpassing beauty of its capital; the general fertility of the country-contrasting so strikingly with the bleak, bare hills and arid wastes of many parts of Spain-surprised and delighted them; while the genial temper of the people, and the perfect safety of both high-roads and bye-roads (for brigandage has long been wholly extinct in Portugal) were new and pleasing features to them in travelling. One evening early in September, a party of four, two gentlemen and two ladies—one of the latter English, and the writer of this sketch-returned to the Hotel do Mondego, in the interesting old University city of Coimbra, from an excursion to the famous mountain of Busaco; amidst whose glens and defiles the Anglo-Portuguese army, under Wellington, defeated the French, under Masséna and Ney, in 1809. A granite obelisk surmounted by a crystal star was then being erected on that lovely spot, which rivals Cintra in beauty and fertility, to commemorate the victory gained there upwards of sixty years before. It was vacation time at Coimbra, and the usual habitués of the hotel, the University students, therefore, absent; the guests at the mesa redonda (table d'hôte) consisted only of the Spanish party and three young men, on a pedestrian tour-the first Portuguese travellers, very probably, who had journeyed in their country in knapsack fashion. They were hungry, weary, and foot-sore; for they had recently ascended Canaris, the highest peak of the Estrella, and after spending three days in exploring the mountains had made the descent by the most difficult route.

To cross the Serra da Estrella and make our way to Abrantes by that part of Beira baixa the Portuguese call their Switzerland, had been suggested that morning by one of the Spaniards; and as the

pedestrians described with much enthusiasm the singular beauty of the scenery they had witnessed as the reward of their toil and fatigue, it was determined that the idea should be carried out-but not on foot. The mountain can be ascended by horses or mules. The ascent is more toilsome and difficult than that of the Gerez ; yet with ordinary nerve and a sure-footed beast, no danger need be feared, but much keen delight and pleasure expected, if the excursion be made at the right time of the year. After a day's rest, our tourist acquaintances, refreshed and braced up for new feats of pedestrianism, bade us adieu. In the meantime, profiting by their experience and information, we had made the needful preparations for our expedition, and at about the same hour-half-past four a.m.as they took their departure, left Coimbra in a hired carriage for St. Thiago de Ceia, where mules and a guide were to await us. It is a journey of about fifty-three miles; but distances, and even the position of small towns and villages of that hilly district, as marked on ordinary maps, cannot be depended upon. However, en attendant the railroad that is to connect Coimbra with Castello Rodrigo and open fair Lusitania to travellers by way of the Spanish frontier, a most excellent road has been constructed, as far as Guarda, and a diligencia traverses it daily.

The morning was calm; a delicious softness pervaded the atmosphere; a deep golden hue soon overspread the eastern sky and gleamed through the gauzy rose-tinted mists that hung on the face of the distant mountains. The sound of tinkling convent bells, calling to matins, reached the ear as we turned from the city and crossed the smooth silvery Mondego by the new bridge of Portella, then just completed. The road followed the windings of this "river of the Muses" for a considerable distance. Its banks were rich with verdure, and the lavender bushes and aromatic plants that grow there in such profusion filled the air with sweet odours. Birds trilled and warbled their morning songs amidst the foliage. White cottages, half hidden by trellised and festooned vines burnished by the glowing sun-tints of autumn, were perched in groups on the slopes of the hills. Vivas were constantly exchanged with passing peasants, and with merry, dark-eyed girls and women on their way to the market-following their oxen-carts, laden with fruits and vegetables-and who with their gay-coloured kerchiefs and petti

coats, and broad-brimmed hats wreathed with flowers, lent animation to the soft beauty of early morning.

To the luxuriant and varied vegetation of the steep banks of the Mondego succeeded a long stretch of undulating park-like ground; groves of fine chestnuts and fantastically shaped cork trees, and on every grassy knoll clumps of far-spreading oaks. Cattle were grazing and shepherds tending their flocks. A turn in the road changes the scene: high hills, brown and bare in patches, in other parts covered with red and purple heath, and surmounted by a crown of dark pines. On an eminence to the right stands the Castle of Louza, of which many romantic Moorish legends are told. Further on is Argenil, with its manufactory-an important one in Portugal— of orange-wood toothpicks. Soon, the Ponte de Murcella is reached -a handsome bridge over the Alva. There is a very tolerable inn at this place, and a more than tolerable repast awaited us there— ordered the preceding day. Murcella, which gives its name to the bridge, is a charmingly fresh and picturesque spot, embosomed in densely wooded hills—a favourite resort of the nightingales. The Alva glides swiftly through the valley, and abounds in fine trout. At a part where the stream was rather shallow, and shaded by gracefully drooping willows, a number of women were vigorously beating and washing linen on the pebbly bed; accompanying this labour, and no doubt lightening the toil, by equally vigorous singing. Swarthy black-eyed urchins, twenty or thirty of them-the greater part naked as they came into the world-rolled, and tumbled, and laughed, and disported themselves with great glee on the margin of the river. The next day was Sunday and St. Somebody's festa. Early, very early, the whole community turned out in gala dress; the women profusely adorned with antique gold earrings, massive chains, hearts, lockets and rings, and wearing bouquets of red and white carnations in their hats. They saluted us with many a boa viagem" as we drove out of the village.

Hitherto, we seemed to be travelling through one vast pleasure ground, skilfully laid out in every variety of landscape scenery; but on leaving Ponte de Murcella the country gradually assumes a wilder appearance. We see more of the dark pine, and the blue mountains towering up boldly in the distance. Loose stones, and fragments of rock that have been hurled from the higher hills by the force of the

mountain torrents in spring, lie along the path, and the road, though excellently constructed, rises and falls with a frequency that makes progress slow, and the journey fatiguing both for horses and travellers. The ascents and descents near the spurs of the serra are exceedingly steep. And it is a very silent region, wholly forsaken by the feathered tribe; the stillness is broken only by the sound of the horses' hoofs, or the voice of the driver cheering on his beasts; except when those sounds are repeated by an echo. And this sometimes occurs with startling distinctness. The picturesque wildness of the hills was relieved by intervening valleys where vegetation was luxuriantly rich. On their slopes were plantations of dwarfed vines. In some parts the vintage had begun, and the refrain of the joyous vintage song of the grape-gatherers, that now and then from afar fell on the ear, had a most musical sound, and was a pleasing relief to the general silence of the scene. The small streams that in autumn trickle down the mountains almost unnoticed, are in spring (which some think the proper season for visiting these parts) swollen into foaming torrents by the melting snows-impeding and sometimes entirely preventing the progress of the traveller. The rhododendrons and hydrangeas, which are of remarkable growth and beauty, are then in full bloom; wild flowers cover the ground, and grow in pretty, varied bouquets in the crevices of the rocks. But, when the dense woods and the chestnut groves are tinged with the crimson and golden brown of autumn, interspersed with every shade of green, there is a far richer beauty in the scenery. The chestnuts of Portugal are perhaps the finest trees of that kind in the world; they are rather tardy in putting forth their buds, but retain their foliage and its exquisite colouring until quite late in the year. Flowers, too, at this season abound, and the numerous autumn butterflies are lovely.

But we are arrived at St. Thiago de Ceia. It is a very pretty village, where there is a pousada soffrivel, as the Portuguese say; but it is less to be commended than the little inn at Murcella, which José Mattos, "mine host" of that hostelry, rates as a first-class hotel. The pousada at Ceia is a less pretentious establishment, but kept by very civil and obliging people, who made things as comfortable for us as their small resources allowed. The innkeeper's wife expatiated at great length on the excellence of her beds, which