d than in our own rural districts. It is not by reading the
newspapers, but by talking matters over with his neighbor, that the
Portuguese farmer obtains his sound and intelligent views on the
politics of his country. He is a great talker, taking a keen interest in
all that goes on, enjoying a joke thoroughly and addressing his comrade
with all the ceremonies and distinctions of a language which contains
half a dozen different forms of address. The illiterate peasant is no
whit behind the man of culture in the purity of his Portuguese. In no
country in Europe is the language kept freer from dialect, and this
notwithstanding the fact that it is one of involved grammatical forms.
In France the use of the imperfect subjunctive is given up by the lower
classes and by foreigners, but in Portugal the peasant has still deeper
subtleties of speech at the end of his tongue. Add to this that he has a
vocabulary of abuse before which the Spaniard or the California
mule-driver would be silenced, and you have the extent of his linguistic
accomplishments. This profane eloquence was an art imparted no doubt by
the Moors. The refinements of syntax come from the Latin, to which
Portuguese bears more affinity in form than any other modern language.

From the Romans the Lusitanian received his first lessons in
agriculture--lessons which have never been entirely superseded. His
plough was given him by the Romans, and he has not yet seen fit to alter
the pattern. The ox-cart used in town and country for all purposes of
draught is another relic preserved intact. Its wheels of solid wood are
fastened to the axle, which revolves with them, this revolution being
accompanied by a chorus of inharmonious shrieks and creaks and wails
which to the foreign and prejudiced nerve is simply agonizing. Its
master hears it with a different ear: he finds it rather cheerful than
otherwise, good to enliven the oxen, to dispel the silence of lonely
places and to frighten away wolves and bogies, of which enemies he has a
childish awe. Instead, therefore, of pouring oil upon this discord, he
applies lemon-juice to aggravate the sound! The cart pleases the eye of
the stranger more than his ear. When in the vintage season the upright
poles forming its sides are bound together by a wickerwork of vine
branches with their large leaves, and the inside is heaped with purple
grapes, it is a goodly sight, and one which Alma-Tadema might paint as a
Roman vintage, for it is