Being in Lisbon in October last, I sauntered one evening into the Livraria Bertrand, a recognised meeting-place of men of letters in the Chiado, still the principal street of the Capital, and now known officially as the Rua Garrett, though, in practice, the greater poet has not displaced the lesser. There I found Senhor Francisco Ramos Paz, proprietor of the Gazeta de Noticias of Rio de Janeiro, and our conversation turned on E?a de Queiroz. I happened to say that I had recently published an English version of{viii} the Suave Milagre and had one of the Defunto ready for the press, whereupon Senhor Ramos Paz told me that the original MS. of the latter story belonged to him, it having been written for his paper, and that Queiroz had expressed the opinion to his publishers, MM. Lugan et Genelioux of Oporto, that it was his best short story. Finding my own opinion unexpectedly confirmed by so keen a self-critic as the Founder of the Realist School in Portugal, I have the less hesitation in submitting the Defunto (which I have ventured to re-name Our Lady of the Pillar) to your appreciation. In the Preface to The Sweet Miracle I referred to some of the leading works of Queiroz, and would only add that those who{ix} desire to know more of him and of the romance in Portugal might read with advantage the Revista Moderna for November 20th, 1897, and the suggestive series of essays by Senhor J. Pereira de Sampaio (Bruno) entitled A Gera??o Nova (Porto, 1886).

The frontispiece of the present volume shows the monument in the Largo do Quintella in Lisbon raised to Queiroz by the devotion of the Conde de Arnoso and other admiring friends. The bust is generally agreed to be an excellent likeness, though the face perhaps wears a severer expression in marble than it did in life, and it has not therefore the photographic accuracy of the bust by Rapha............