said L'Isle, "I will begin
by reminding you that the history of many races and eras is
indissolubly connected with the Peninsula, and especially the southern
part of it. Here we find the land of _Tarshish_ of Scripture, so well
known to the Phoenicians, who, in an adjacent province of Spain, built
another Sidon, and founded Cadiz before Hector and Achilles fought at
Troy.

"Yet they found the Celto-Iberian here before them--who after that
built Evora, according to Portuguese historians, some eight or ten
centuries before Christ. The Greeks, too, stretched their commerce and
their colonies to this land. The Carthaginians made themselves masters
of this country. The Romans turned them out, to give place in time to
the Vandals; who were driven over into Africa by the Goths--whose
dominion was, at the end of two centuries, overthrown by the Arabs;
who, after a war of seven centuries, were expelled in turn by the
descendants of their Gothic rivals. The land still shows many traces
of these revolutions. In the neighborhood of this city the rude altar
of the Druid still commemorates the early Celt. The majesty of the
Roman temple here forms a singular contrast with the delicacy of the
Arabian monuments, and the Gothic architecture with the simplicity of
the modern edifices."

"A truly Ciceronian introduction to your duties as _cicerone_," said
Lady Mabel. "But I have yet to see much that you describe so
eloquently. To my eye the most striking feature of Evora at this day
is its ecclesiastical aspect. It is full of churches, chapels, and
monkish barracks, and seems to be held by a strong garrison of these
soldiers of the Pope."

"Baal's prophets are four hundred and fifty men," said old Moodie, in
loud soliloquy behind.

"I have often heard the Pope called Antichrist, but never knew him
dubbed Baal before," said Lady Mabel. "Although not one of his flock,
I cannot but feel a deep interest in the head of the Latin Church, now
that the venerable old man is so shamefully treated; carried off and
kept a prisoner in France, to be bullied, threatened, and cajoled,
with a view to appropriate the papal influence to the furtherance of
this Corsican's ambition."

"You had better leave all those feelings to his own flock, my lady."

"Is it possible, Moodie," Lady Mabel retorted, "that you do not know
that we are on the Pope's side in this quarrel? We are bound to
sympathize with him, not only in politics but in religion, against h