Page:Lisbon and Cintra, Inchbold, 1907.djvu/38

Rh D. Pedro IV had a short but brilliant career, marked by romantic contrasts that are unique even in the history of kings. Upon the death of his father, João VI in 1826, D. Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, found himself at the head of two nations of rival ambitions and opposed interests, and distant from each other three thousand miles. In despair of reconciling them, he resigned Portugal in favour of his daughter, D. Maria da Gloria, and anticipated her arrival in that country by a gift of the Constitutional Charter to the nation, by which the two Chambers of the representative government were established though later developments have introduced various changes. After renouncing a kingdom in the old world, D. Pedro's subjects in Brazil obliged him to abdicate the throne to his son, still a minor. He came back to Portugal, and devoted himself to fighting for the freedom of his country, and establishing the claims of D. Maria against her uncle, D. Miguel. A few months after he had restored the crown to the young Queen, D. Pedro died at the early age of thirty-five. It is no small debt of gratitude that Portugal owes to her Liberating King, but without the help of British soldiers and sailors he could not have released her from the despotic rule of D. Miguel.

A delightful feature of Lisbon is seen in the numerous fountains to be found everywhere. Here are figures of Neptunes or marble obelisks, there a sculptured Venus and Adonis, again as on the Largo do Carmo an original erection in the form of a temple, and elsewhere simply the hollowed shell and a facet with chained cup. Some of them are beautiful, and all interesting, by reason of the picturesque groups which collect around them to fetch and draw water. The women have as free and graceful a carriage in balancing their huge water-jars sideways on the head as the women of the East. In fact the same love of the 18