Page:Lisbon and Cintra, Inchbold, 1907.djvu/109

Rh gems, examples of rare craftsmanship all vying one with the other in beauty of design and dainty, ingenious execution. In front of all these glass-faced cabinets one lingers long making involuntary comparisons, for the spoils of the different religious houses are marked by name. Among the most valuable and beautiful are ranked the Custodia and other jewelled plate of the Igreja Madre de Deus. Sunday afternoon is a favourite time for the Lisbonense to visit their National Museum, in fact I have been there at times when it was difficult to pass from one gallery to the other for the number blocking the way. Among the many appreciators of the Church's invaluable relics one notes groups of the humbler classes of city and suburb, the women with the gay, spotless handkerchiefs tied round their heads, the men in their broad-brimmed sombreros of felt, their awed, absorbed faces all showing the keenest interest in objects that still retain for them the original halo of sanctity.

There is also a fine display of ecclesiastical vestments, altar frontals and banners, embroidered with a fantasy of design, a wealth of gold and silver thread, a rare contrivance of daring or delicate colouring, that tell of the Oriental influence of the Moors strongly ingrained upon national taste. This is evident, too, in the interesting collection of richly worked costumes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Up to the time of D. Fernando nearly all the ecclesiastical vestments and altar furniture embroidered on silk and velvet were worked abroad, chiefly in Flanders, but in that reign the Portuguese began to cultivate the industrial art of embroidery and passementerie. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the development of the industry was as remarkable for its excellent productions as for the number of workers employed. 79