480 A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 
surging in the world outside, constantly developing new 
phases of national and individual life ; indeed, of all but 
her own narrow domestic existence she is profoundly igno- 
rant. 
On one occasion, when staying at a fazenda, I took up a 
volume which was lying on the piano. A book is such a 
rare sight, in the rooms occupied by the family, that I was 
curious to see its contents. As I stood turning over the 
leaves (it proved to be a romance), the master of the 
house came up, and remarked that the book was not suit- 
able reading for ladies, but that here (putting into my hand 
a small volume) was a work adapted to the use of women 
and children, which he had provided for the senhoras of 
his family. I opened it, and found it to be a sort of text- 
book of morals, filled with commonplace sentiments, copy- 
book phrases, written in a tone of condescending indul- 
gence for the feminine intellect, women being, after all, 
the mothers of men, and understood to have some little 
influence on their education. I could hardly wonder, after 
seeing this specimen of their intellectual food, that the wife 
and daughters of our host were not greatly addicted to 
reading. Nothing strikes a stranger more than the absence 
of books in Brazilian houses. If the father is a professional 
man, he has his small library of medicine or law, but books 
are never seen scattered about as if in common use ; they 
make no part of the daily life. I repeat, that there are ex- 
ceptions. I well remember finding in the sitting-room of a 
young girl, by whose family we had been most cordially re- 
ceived, a well-selected library of the best literary and his- 
torical works in German and French ; but this is the only 
instance of the kind we met with during our year in Brazil. 
Even when the Brazilian women have received the ordinary 
