Various - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 559, July 28, 1832

At Coimbra, about two days' journey from Oporto, is a Roman bridge and aqueduct, nearly entire.

The dangerous passage across the bar of the Douro, and its shifting sands, are well known. The care and skill required to navigate a vessel with safety into the Douro, even during the summer, may give an idea of what the perils of this dangerous bar must be during the winter months; when the coast is exposed to the unbridled fury of the westerly winds, and to the full force of the Atlantic waves.— Portugal Illustrated, by the Rev. W. Kinsey, B.D.

See Select Views of Oporto. By Lieut. Col. Batty, F.R.S., the accuracy of which may be said to extend as far as pictorial art can succeed in conveying foreign objects to our firesides. We are indebted for our Engraving to this valuable work.

Here is the altar of wrought silver, which was fortunately rescued from the hands of the French, when in possession of Oporto.

The annual average quantity of wine exported from Oporto to Great Britain, was in the ten years, 1813-1822, 24,364 pipes, and to all other parts of the world only 1,094 pipes per annum. The quantity since 1822 has not materially altered.— See a Communication to vol. xv. of the Mirror , p. 118.

His mode of execution being perfectly novel, and at the same time ingenious , Curran said, "The lieutenant should have got a patent for cheap strangulation."

The lieutenant's brother being a Crown solicitor, had now and then got the lieutenant to copy the high treason indictments: and he, seeing there that imagining the death of a king was punished capitally, very naturally conceived that wishing it was twice as bad as supposing it: having therefore no doubt that all rebels wished it, he consequently decided in the tribunal of his own mind to hang every man who hypothetically and traitorously wished his majesty's dissolution, which wish he also conceived was very easily ascertained by the wisher's countenance.

A cabinet-maker, at Charing Cross, some years ago, put on his board "patent coffin-maker to his majesty:" it was considered that though this was not an ill-intentioned , yet it was a very improper mode of imagining the king's death, and the board was taken down accordingly. Lieutenant H. would surely have hanged him in Ireland.