Note 23 — Chapter I · OUTWARD BOUND.—LIVERPOOL TO LISBON.

At this convent was educated Don John VI., grandfather to the late ‘Lusian’s luckless Queen,’ who died in 1816 in Brazil, from the melancholy derangement from which Dr. Willis, who had attended George III. for a similar malady, was unable to recover her. The young prince was placed here with the idea of his wearing the cowl as abbot, prior to attaining the highest ecclesiastical honours; but the unexpected death of his elder brother made him heir to the throne, which he afterwards filled. Of the suitability of the structure for so august an inmate, the late Lord Carnarvon, who visited it in 1827, says:—I rode through a bleak but not unpleasant country to Mafra. The convent and palace united constitute an immense pile of building, which excites admiration rather from its vast extent than from any architectural merits, and forms a quadrangle, measuring 760 feet from east to west, and 670 feet from north to south. The church is situate in the centre, and three hundred cells are placed behind the choir; the palace might perhaps contain without inconvenience all the courts of Europe. The thermometer had risen to more than 90°, and it was indeed no common luxury to exchange such intolerable heat for the refreshing temperature of the convent galleries, which are built of stone, and are high, wide, dark, and apparently interminable. Within those massive walls the fluctuations of the external atmosphere are never felt; and rarely indeed do any external sounds pierce through those mighty barriers. The monks showed us the refectory, a spacious apartment, and the library, well stored with books.—Portugal and Galicia, with a Review of the Social and Political State of the Basque Provinces. By the Earl of Carnarvon. Third Edition.—London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1848.