Page:Lisbon and Cintra, Inchbold, 1907.djvu/24

Rh place on the Atlantic coast. Yet these crowded slopes and hollows, the suggestions of hanging gardens and foliaged spaces all set in the pearly atmosphere against the pure, peerless blue of a Southern sky, still draw imagination like a magnet. Expectation is not deceived, for when the Marine Arsenal, a grim, long edifice of massive structure is passed, there comes a break in the barrier, and a deep, wide square opens out to view.

It is the famous Terreiro do Paço, or place of the palace, familiar to English ears as Black Horse Square, and to others under its modern name of Praça do Commercio. A fine quay, with flights of steps ascending from the water to a broad terrace flanked with parapets, forms the south side of the square. The other three façades are composed of Government buildings, such as the Palace of Justice, the War Office, the Chamber of Commerce, the Custom House, the General Post Office, the Exchange, the House of India, and so forth. The regular line of these fine, high edifices, with their colonnades beneath, give the aspect of a nobly-proportioned caravanserai to the whole area.

An equestrian statue shows high and important against a section of the old town, climbing the hill behind the north-east corner of the Praça. A triumphal arch forms the entrance to the chief street of the lower town. With isolated exceptions of recent erection the architecture of the government buildings and of the streets behind the square is a style which dates from the reconstruction era of the city after the earthquake of 1755. Lisbon owes her rebirth after the great catastrophe, not only structurally, but in political, commercial, social and religious issues, to the greatest statesman Portugal has possessed, Sebastiāo José de Carvalho e Mello, Marquez de Pombal. There are those who state that the man was as useful to his country as the earthquake was to Lisbon, inasmuch as the violent 6