not distinguish
the grey blue of the deep shadows, so much blue was in the painted or
distempered outer walls. It was in Lisbon that I first began to discern
the mental effect of colour, and to see that it comes truly and of
necessity from a people's temperament. Can a busy race be true
colourists?

In some parts of the town--the eastern quarters--one cannot help
noticing the still remaining influence of the Moors. There are even some
true relics; but certainly the influence survives in flat-sided houses
with small windows and Moorish ornament high up just under the edge of
the flat roof. One day, being tired of the more noisy western town, I
went east and climbed up and up, being alternately in deep shadow and
burning sunlight and turned round by a barrack, where some soldiers eyed
me as a possible Englishman. I hoped to see the Tagus at last, for here
the houses are not so lofty, and presently, being on very high ground, I
caught a view of it, darkly dotted with steamers, over some flat roofs.
Towards the sea it narrows, but above Lisbon it widens out like a lake.
On the far side was a white town, beyond that again hills blue with
lucid atmosphere. At my feet (I leant against a low wall) was a terraced
garden with a big vine spread on a trellis, making--or promising to make
in the later spring--a long shady arbour, for as yet the leaves were
scanty and freshly green. Every house was faint blue or varied pink, or
worn-out, washed-out, sun-dried green. All the tones were beautiful and
modest, fitting the sun yet not competing with it. In London the colour
would break the level of dull tints and angrily protest, growing scarlet
and vivid and wrathful. And just as I looked away from the river and the
vine-clad terrace there was a scurrying rush of little school-boys from
a steep side-street. They ran down the slope, and passed me, going
quickly like black blots on the road, yet their laughter was sunlight on
the ripple of waters. The Portuguese are always children and are not
sombre. Only in their graveyards stand solemn cypresses which rise
darkly on the hillside where they bury their dead; but in life they
laugh and are merry even after they have children of their own.

Though little apt to do what is supposed to be a traveller's duty in
visiting certain obvious places of interest, I one day hunted for the
English cemetery in which Fielding lies buried, and found it at last
just at the back of a little open park or gar