When the poet Wordsworth and his friend Jones landed at Calais in 1790 they found

   “France standing on the top of golden years
   And human nature seeming born again.”

Not once, but fifty times, in Portugal these lines came back to my mind.  The parallel, it may be said, is an ominous one, in view of subsequent manifestations of the reborn French human nature.  But there is a world of difference between Portugal and France, between the House of Braganza and the House of Bourbon.

It was nearly one in the morning when my train from Badajoz drew into the Rocio station at Lisbon; yet I had no sooner passed the barrier than I heard a band in the great hall of the station strike up an unfamiliar but not unpleasing air, the rhythm of which plainly announced it to be a national anthem—­a conjecture confirmed by a wild burst of cheering at the close.  The reason of this midnight demonstration I never ascertained; but, indeed, no one in Lisbon asks for a reason for striking up “A Portugueza,” the new patriotic song.  Before twenty-four hours had passed I was perfectly familiar with its rather plaintive than martial strains, suited, no doubt, to the sentimental character of the people.  An American friend, who arrived a day or two after me, made acquaintance with “A Portugueza” even more immediately than I did.  Soon after passing the frontier he fell into conversation with a Portuguese fellow traveler, who, in the course of ten minutes or so, asked him whether he would like to hear the new national anthem, and then and there sang it to him, amid great applause from the other occupants of the compartment.  In the cafes and theaters of Lisbon “A Portugueza” may break out at any moment, without any apparent provocation, and you must, of course, stand up and uncover; but there is in some quarters a movement of protest against these observances as savoring of monarchical flunkyism.  When I left Lisbon at half-past seven A.M. there was no demonstration such as had greeted my arrival; but at the first halting-place a man stepped out from a little crowd on the platform and shouted “Viva Machado dos Santos!  Viva a Republica Portugueza!”—­and I found that the compartment adjoining my own was illumined by the presence of the bright particular star of the revolt.  At the next station—­Torres Vedras of historic fame—­the platform was crowded and scores of red and green flags were waving.  As the train steamed in, two bands struck up “A Portugueza,” and as one had about two minutes’ start of the other, the effect was more patriotic than harmonious.  The hero had no sooner alighted than he was lifted shoulder-high by the crowd, and carried in triumph from the station, amid the blaring of the bands and the crackling of innumerable little detonators, which here enter freely into the ritual of rejoicing.  Next morning I read in the papers a full account of the “Apoteose” of Machado dos Santos, which seems to have kept Torres Vedras busy and happy all day long.