GENERAL IMPRESSIONS OF BRAZIL. 503 
restraint of a woman's life, we are not justified, however 
false these ideas may seem to us, in considering the present 
generation as responsible for them ; they are also too 
deeply rooted to be changed in a day. 
On several occasions I have alluded in terms of praise to 
the working of the institutions of Brazil. Nothing can be 
more liberal than the Constitution of the land ; every 
guaranty is therein secured to the freest assertion of all 
the natural rights of man. And yet there are some fea- 
tures in the habits of the people, probably the results of 
an antiquated social condition, which impede the progress 
of the nation. It should not be forgotten that the white 
population of Brazil is chiefly descended from the Portu- 
guese, and that of all Europe Portugal is the country which 
at the time of the discovery and settlement of Brazil, had 
least been affected by the growth of our modern civilization. 
Indeed, the great migrations which convulsed Europe in 
the Middle Ages, and the Reformation, upon which the new 
social order chiefly rests, have scarcely affected Portugal ; 
so that Roman ways, Roman architecture, and a degenerate 
Latin were still flourishing when her Transatlantic colo- 
nies were founded ; and, as in all colonies, the conditions 
of the mother country were but slowly modified. No 
wonder, therefore, that the older structures of Rio de 
Janeiro should recall, in the most surprising manner, 
the architecture of ancient Rome, as disclosed by the ex- 
cavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and that the social 
condition of Brazil should remind us of the habits of a 
people among whom women played so subordinate a part. 
It seems to me that even now the administration of the 
provinces, as in the Roman civilization, is calculated to en- 
force the law, rather than to develop the material resources 
