The Prime Minister

Joyous and sparkling waves were leaping up from the deep blue expanse of the vast Atlantic, as if to welcome a gallant vessel, which glided rapidly onward in all the pride of be...

It was yet some hours before dawn. The gale had rather increased than lessened in fury, the corvette, with all her canvass closely furled, was driving impetuously before it, the...

Scarcely had the lawless career of the Salee rover thus awfully terminated, as we have narrated at the end of our last chapter, than the spirit of the storm, as if satisfied wit...

We must now quit the free, boundless, ever-varying ocean, on which we delight to dwell, with its exciting incidents of the chase, the tempest, and the fight, for the confined sp...

It has just occurred to us, that our readers will begin to suppose we design to make Don Luis d'Almeida our hero; but we must disclaim intending to introduce any such character;...

At the time of which we write, the streets of Lisbon were, perhaps, the most rugged, the most ill-lighted, the worst paved, and the most filthy, of any city in Christendom. It i...

The Portuguese, with much _naivete_, relate a story which is told against them, that Noah, a few years ago, paid a visit to this our planet, on which he once on a time played so...

The glowing sun of that lovely clime was already high in the heavens, in which not a cloud or vapour was to be seen; the air came soft and pure over the heath, laden with balsam...

There are some feelings of the heart so intense that language possesses no words of sufficient force to describe them; and such was the passion which wrung the bosom of the prou...

In looking over the many various and bulky documents before us, from which we are compiling this history, we see an account of a personage who played a conspicuous part in the s...

We invariably feel much satisfaction, when, in turning over the pages of the manuscripts before us, we come to the name of Don Luis d'Almeida, albeit he played no very conspicuo...

Here we have arrived at the last chapter of our first volume, without having advanced any way in our story; but it is, we conceive, an error on the right side, as the chief inte...

In painting a true picture of times and events, we must introduce among our figures the wealthy and great, the wicked, the wretched, and the indigent, or we should present no tr...

We find ourselves so constantly recurring to Don Luis d'Almeida, that we begin to fear our readers, particularly the fairer portion of them, will soon get heartily tired of hear...

We find it chronicled in history, that, either on the 10th or 20th of October, for the figures are nearly obliterated in the manuscript before us, AD 1754, their Majesties of Po...

When Don Luis reached the palace of the Marchioness of Corcunda, where he had learned that Donna Clara and her father were residing, he saw light streaming from all the windows,...

How bright and fair are the hopes of youth, like the early flowers of spring; but how soon, alas! do they, too, wither and decay, beneath the first scorching blast of summer. Po...

We have just discovered that we have been committing a very grave error during the previous part of this work, in writing very long chapters, but it is one which we have resolve...

"This conduct of your sister's will drive me mad, Goncalo!" exclaimed the Count, as soon as they were in the street. "Her coldness I could have borne; but to see her receiving,...

More than a week passed away; it was now within three days of the end of October, when Luis had repaired to a neighbouring church, to hear morning mass, and was kneeling on one...

On the morning of the 1st of November, 1755, the murky gloom, which had for so long hung over the city, appeared to have settled down in a dense fog, a phenomenon so unusual, th...

Were we to indulge, while describing scenes like the present, in the light jest, or stroke of satire, we should deem ourselves equally capable of laughing at the anguish and wre...

We left our good friend Captain Pinto, having just parted from Luis, hurrying off on a visit of charity to the stranger Senhor Mendez. He found him, contrary to his expectations...

It would be impossible to describe, and difficult even to conceive, a scene in which a greater assemblage of crime, wretchedness, and filth was to be found, than that which, at...

It is a very common saying, that there is honour among thieves; in which, from the information we have collected on the subject, we perfectly agree, provided they are convinced...

We fear that our readers will begin to suppose that we are romancing, when we describe so many hair-breadth escapes and unexpected interferences, which preserved the lives of th...

Twice had the sun risen over the city of desolation since the dreadful catastrophe of the 1st of November; and the flames yet raged in every part. Nearly twenty thousand persons...

We have observed, in the course of our very desultory custom of reading, that most novelists delight in endeavouring to make their readers suppose, somewhere about the middle of...

Sad was the change which three days of intense anxiety and suffering had worked on the fair cheek of the still lovely Clara. She might have been compared to the fresh-blown rose...

Several days had passed by since the dreadful morning of terror and destruction; and, though slight shocks were occasionally still felt, people had become accustomed to them, an...

"Farewell, my kind friend," exclaimed Don Luis, pressing the hand of Captain Pinto, as they stood together in front of their humble lodgings on the outskirts of the ruined city,...

More than a year had passed since the dreadful earthquake of Lisbon, as the violent convulsion of the globe in 1755 is commonly called, although it was felt over the greater par...

We have, for a considerable time, lost sight of Donna Theresa d'Alorna, now the young Marchioness of Tavora. She was seated in her private apartment, on the morning following th...

Being very anxious to proceed with our history, we would rather avoid any retrospection; but, that our readers may understand more clearly the occurrences of the times we are no...

The usual time for paying visits in Portugal is in the evening, when ladies are borne about to the houses of their acquaintances in their carriages or chairs, full dressed, as i...

In the neighbourhood of Lisbon, the Crown possessed one or two parks, of great extent, which were called Coitadas, stocked with every description of game, both to follow on hors...

We have just discovered that we have written five chapters of our history without once mentioning the name of one who played so conspicuous a part in the commencement: we mean o...

When the Father Jacinto da Costa quitted the Quinta of the Marchioness of Tavora, he paid several visits, in different parts of the city, to forward the various plots in which h...

On the following morning, the King, accompanied by his Ministers, and the chief officers of his household, held a grand review of all the troops quartered in and about Lisbon, i...

If the country inns of Portugal are bad, those of the cities are very little better. So thought Luis d'Almeida, as, towards the evening of a day at the very end of autumn, accom...

We left that very respectable personage, Senhor Policarpio, entertaining two friends in the garden of the Duke of Aveiro's residence. As it grew dark, he invited them again into...

In a large saloon, richly furnished with every article of luxury then invented to minister to comfort or to pride, a young lady was seated on a sofa, before a table, on which ha...

On the morning after the events last described, a rumour was spread over Lisbon that something dreadful had happened; and people met each other in the streets with alarmed and i...

"O who would wish to be a King?" said the gallant King James of Scotland, when the fantastic, fickle, fierce, and vain herd were shouting the name of Douglas; and we ask, Who wo...

It was the middle of winter, but, notwithstanding the season of the year, the sun shone brightly forth, shedding a genial warmth upon the beggars and dogs who were basking benea...

The Prime Minister was seated in the private council chamber of the King, to which we have frequently before introduced our readers. A lamp stood on the table, throwing its ligh...

The young Count d'Almeida had, since his arrival in Lisbon, been leading a life of complete retirement, at the quiet abode Pedro had selected for him. He had withdrawn himself f...

Our history carries us once more to the country-house of the Duke of Aveiro at Azeitao, where the noble owner had arrived the morning after the family meeting at the Quinta of t...

Luis d'Almeida had already spent some time in prison, each successive day expecting to be informed of the cause of his detention, and to be brought to trial; but nothing of the...

Words are insufficient to describe the sufferings of the high-born captives who lay in those wretched cells, formed to contain wild beasts instead of human beings, whither the s...

We would gladly avoid detailing the following narrative, but no one who is writing the life of the great Prime Minister of Portugal can pass it over in silence; and while his na...

Ours is a tale of human woe and human suffering; of blighted hopes, of disappointed ambition, of noble promise, and of bright aspirations doomed never to be realised; of crime,...

We left the Count d'Almeida an inmate of the Jungueira prison, from whence the stern policy of the Prime Minister allowed few captives to depart, except to the scaffold and to d...

The day following the execution of the Duke of Aveiro and his unhappy companions, a fine merchant ship was seen to glide slowly up the broad Tagus, dropping her anchor within a...

We must once more return to the cell of the younger Goncalo Christovao, in the Jungueira prison. The person who entered, narrowly scrutinised the features of all the occupants;...