Under the Porta Nova the fussy little train rushes, and up the narrow, picturesque street, the top-heavy stone scutcheon upon the eighteenth-century gate striking at the very entrance the dominant note of the ancient city. Here and everywhere the archiepiscopal insignia, the tasselled hat and mitre, and the Virgin and Child on the city arms, tell that the place from the earliest Christian times has been an ecclesiastical seignory. Churches, too, greet the eye at every turn; most of them massive seventeenth and eighteenth century structures in the peculiar style mentioned in the description of the Church of Mattosinhos in the last chapter: brownish grey granite outlines and salient points, with dazzling white plaster spaces between. Opposite one such church, in a tiny praça leading off from the main square of the city, the Largo da Lapa, I came across a picturesque scene worthy of the brush of John Philip. In a corner of the little square of San Francisco was an ancient recessed fountain in the wall, and around it, with water jars high and graceful like Roman amphoræ, there fluttered a group of women waiting their turn at the jet. Moving to and fro and clustering in the deep shadow contrasting with the blinding sunlight, these full-bosomed, black-haired women, with fine Roman heads and flashing eyes, were so many points of glaring colour, forming a brilliant giant kaleidoscope, whilst the chattering of many tongues, the jest and taunt thrown over the shoulder to rival or to swain, the careless laughter, seemed to blend and fill the languid air with a vague harmony to the ear, such as the mixed discordant colours in their aggregation produced to the eye. By the side of the gay fountain stood the contrast that heightened its effect. A frowning monastery with heavily grated windows high upon the wall, from which glowered evil faces and thrust thievish hands. For here, again, on this happy holiday afternoon in Braga, the gaol-birds held their levee. Beneath their bars stood their womenkind and children, consoling or grieving; and little bags hung down at the end of strings from the windows to receive the gifts it pleased their friends to send up to the sinister rascals, whose hoarse ribaldry or whining appeal broke in ever and anon upon the gay chatter of the fountain. As if in irony, the church that faced the monastery prison bore upon its front the name the “Temple of the Sacred Order of Penitence.” Of contrition one saw little sign on the part of those who from behind their bars looked for all their weary day upon the church commemorating the unmerited self-reproach of the “Seraphic Father St. Francis.”