章节正文
calm and moonshiny night, which made the passage incredibly
pleasant to the women, who remained three hours enjoying it,
whilst I was left to the cooler transports of enjoying their
pleasures at second-hand; and yet, cooler as they may be, whoever
is totallyignorant of such sensation is, at the same time, void
of all ideas of friendship.
Wednesday.--Lisbon, before which we now lay at anchor, is said to
be built on the same number of hills with old Rome; but these do
not all appear to the water; on the contrary, one sees from
thence one vast high hill and rock, with buildings arising above
one another, and that in so steep and almost perpendicular a
manner, that they all seem to have but one foundation.
As the houses, convents, churches, &c., are large, and all built
with white stone, they look very beautiful at a distance; but as
you approach nearer, and find them to want every kind of
ornament, all idea of beauty vanishes at once. While I was
surveying the prospect of this city, which bears so little
resemblance to any other that I have ever seen, a reflection
occurred to me that, if a man was suddenly to be removed from
Palmyra hither, and should take a view of no other city, in how
glorious a light would the ancient architecture appear to him!
and what desolation and destruction of arts and sciences would he
conclude had happened between the several eras of these cities!
I had now waited full three hours upon deck for the return of my
man, whom I had sent to bespeak a good dinner (a thing which had
been long unknown to me) on shore, and then to bring a Lisbon
chaise with him to the seashore; but it seems the impertinence of
the providore was not yet brought to a conclusion. At three
o'clock, when I was from emptiness, rather faint than hungry, my
man returned, and told me there was a new law lately made that no
passenger should set his foot on shore without a special order
from the providore, and that he himself would have been sent to
prison for disobeying it, had he not been protected as the
servant of the captain. He informed me likewise that the captain
had been very industrious to get this order, but that it was then
the providore's hour of sleep, a time when no man, except the
king himself, durst disturb him.
To avoid prolixity, though in a part of my narrative which may be
more agreeable to my reader than it was to me, the providore,
having at last finished his nap, dispatched this absurd matter of
form, and gave me leave to come, or rather to be carried, on shore.
What it was that gave the first hint of this strange law is not
easy to guess. Possibly, in the infancy of their defection, and
before their government could be well established, they were
willing to guard against the bare possibility of surprise, of the
success of which bare possibility the Trojan horse will remain
for ever on record, as a great and memorable example. Now the
Portuguese have no walls to secure them, and a vessel of two or
three hundred tons will contain a much larger body of troops than
could be concealed in that famous machine, though Virgil tells us
(somewhat hyperbolically, I believe) that it was as big as a
mountain.
About seven in the evening I got into a chaise on shore, and was
driven through the nastiest city in the world, though at the same
time one of the most populous, to a kind of coffee-house, which
is very pleasantlysituated on the brow of a hill, about a mile
from the city, and hath a very fine prospect of the river Tajo
from Lisbon to the sea. Here we regaled ourselves with a good
supper, for which we were as well charged as if the bill had been
made on the Bath-road, between Newbury and London.
And now we could joyfully say,
Egressi optata Troes potiuntur arena.
Therefore, in the words of Horace,
--hie Finis chartaeque viaeque.
End
pleasant to the women, who remained three hours enjoying it,
whilst I was left to the cooler transports of enjoying their
pleasures at second-hand; and yet, cooler as they may be, whoever
is totallyignorant of such sensation is, at the same time, void
of all ideas of friendship.
Wednesday.--Lisbon, before which we now lay at anchor, is said to
be built on the same number of hills with old Rome; but these do
not all appear to the water; on the contrary, one sees from
thence one vast high hill and rock, with buildings arising above
one another, and that in so steep and almost perpendicular a
manner, that they all seem to have but one foundation.
As the houses, convents, churches, &c., are large, and all built
with white stone, they look very beautiful at a distance; but as
you approach nearer, and find them to want every kind of
ornament, all idea of beauty vanishes at once. While I was
surveying the prospect of this city, which bears so little
resemblance to any other that I have ever seen, a reflection
occurred to me that, if a man was suddenly to be removed from
Palmyra hither, and should take a view of no other city, in how
glorious a light would the ancient architecture appear to him!
and what desolation and destruction of arts and sciences would he
conclude had happened between the several eras of these cities!
I had now waited full three hours upon deck for the return of my
man, whom I had sent to bespeak a good dinner (a thing which had
been long unknown to me) on shore, and then to bring a Lisbon
chaise with him to the seashore; but it seems the impertinence of
the providore was not yet brought to a conclusion. At three
o'clock, when I was from emptiness, rather faint than hungry, my
man returned, and told me there was a new law lately made that no
passenger should set his foot on shore without a special order
from the providore, and that he himself would have been sent to
prison for disobeying it, had he not been protected as the
servant of the captain. He informed me likewise that the captain
had been very industrious to get this order, but that it was then
the providore's hour of sleep, a time when no man, except the
king himself, durst disturb him.
To avoid prolixity, though in a part of my narrative which may be
more agreeable to my reader than it was to me, the providore,
having at last finished his nap, dispatched this absurd matter of
form, and gave me leave to come, or rather to be carried, on shore.
What it was that gave the first hint of this strange law is not
easy to guess. Possibly, in the infancy of their defection, and
before their government could be well established, they were
willing to guard against the bare possibility of surprise, of the
success of which bare possibility the Trojan horse will remain
for ever on record, as a great and memorable example. Now the
Portuguese have no walls to secure them, and a vessel of two or
three hundred tons will contain a much larger body of troops than
could be concealed in that famous machine, though Virgil tells us
(somewhat hyperbolically, I believe) that it was as big as a
mountain.
About seven in the evening I got into a chaise on shore, and was
driven through the nastiest city in the world, though at the same
time one of the most populous, to a kind of coffee-house, which
is very pleasantlysituated on the brow of a hill, about a mile
from the city, and hath a very fine prospect of the river Tajo
from Lisbon to the sea. Here we regaled ourselves with a good
supper, for which we were as well charged as if the bill had been
made on the Bath-road, between Newbury and London.
And now we could joyfully say,
Egressi optata Troes potiuntur arena.
Therefore, in the words of Horace,
--hie Finis chartaeque viaeque.
End
- second-hand [,sekənd´hænd]
a.用过的；间接的 (初中英语单词) - ignorant [´ignərənt] a.无知的，愚昧的 (初中英语单词)
- sensation [sen´seiʃən] n.感觉；轰动；轰动一时 (初中英语单词)
- anchor [´æŋkə] n.锚 v.抛锚 (初中英语单词)
- contrary [´kɔntrəri] a.相反的 n.相反 (初中英语单词)
- prospect [´prɔspekt, prəs´pekt] n.景色；境界 v.勘察 (初中英语单词)
- hither [´hiðə] ad.到此处 (初中英语单词)
- destruction [di´strʌkʃən] n.破坏，毁灭 (初中英语单词)
- conclusion [kən´klu:ʒən] n.结束；结论；推论 (初中英语单词)
- lately [´leitli] ad.近来，不久前 (初中英语单词)
- likewise [´laikwaiz] ad.同样地；也，又 (初中英语单词)
- disturb [di´stə:b] vt.扰乱；使不安；打乱 (初中英语单词)
- agreeable [ə´gri:əbəl] a.适合的；符合的 (初中英语单词)
- absurd [əb´sə:d] a.荒谬的，可笑的 (初中英语单词)
- possibility [,pɔsə´biliti] n.可能(性)；希望；前途 (初中英语单词)
- vessel [´vesəl] n.容器；船；脉管 (初中英语单词)
- contain [kən´tein] v.包含；容纳；抑制 (初中英语单词)
- situated [´sitʃueitid] a.位于；处于....境地 (初中英语单词)
- architecture [´ɑ:kitektʃə] n.建筑术；建筑学 (高中英语单词)
- industrious [in´dʌstriəs] a.勤勉的，刻苦的 (高中英语单词)
- narrative [´nærətiv] a.叙述的 n.记事 (高中英语单词)
- memorable [´memərəbəl] a.难忘的；重大的 (高中英语单词)
- pleasantly [´plezntli] ad.令人愉快地；舒适地 (高中英语单词)
- totally [´təutəli] ad.统统，完全 (英语四级单词)
- perpendicular [,pə:pən´dikjulə] a.垂直的 n.正交 (英语四级单词)
- desolation [desə´leiʃ(ə)n] n.荒凉 (英语四级单词)
- seashore [´si:ʃɔ:] n.海岸；海滨 (英语四级单词)
- infancy [´infənsi] n.婴儿期；初期 (英语四级单词)
- joyfully [´dʒɔifuli] ad.高兴地，快乐地 (英语四级单词)
- populous [´pɔpjuləs] a.人口稠密的；众多的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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