Page:Lisbon and Cintra, Inchbold, 1907.djvu/96

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Lisbon and Cintra

is stated to have been left unmarked for many years, a reproach to British appreciation of so gifted a writer, yet some stone or memorial must have been assigned to the spot, for we read in George Borrow's Bible in Spain that travellers, "if they be of England, may well be excused if they kiss the cold tomb, as I did, of the author of Amelia, the most singular genius which their island ever produced." The present massive stone erection was placed there by the efforts of the Rev. Christopher Neville, chaplain in 1830. Three years earlier than Fielding, Philip Doddridge, divine and hymn-writer, had been laid to rest in that same end of the burial ground. Over their graves, and through the whole of that sweet garden, wild canaries, brown and yellow breasted, flit through the foliage, their song, clear and thrilling, striking responsive chords in human hearts of a Hope "that what was shall live as before."

Dos Prazères, or the Pleasures, is the singular name of the Portuguese cemetery for this western side of Lisbon, and for a time I was at a loss to understand its derivation. Then I discovered that a small hermitage once stood on this same site dedicated to Nossa Senhora dos Prazères, the ground around being called Campo dos Prazères. Many are the broad, silent avenues, all numbered as streets, in this Père la Chaise of Lisbon, lined with lofty cypress trees that watch over the countless rows of small chapels, repositaries of the coffins, for the Portuguese are reluctant to bury them out of sight. Flowers and small altars gleam in the shadowy interiors through the iron grilles of the gates. It is an elevated site from which another splendid panorama spreads out to view with the city below, the river in the middle distance, and for background a limitless sea.

Everywhere from this part of the city is seen the

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