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CONVERSATIONS WITH A SPANISH LIBERAL No. V. 



DON PEDRO PALMELLA SILVA CARVALHO SALDANHA MEN- 

 DIZABAL MlNA MADAME ZuMALCARREGUY RODIL. 



" Pedro grande deu aos llussos. Artes et civilizacani, 

 Pedro quarto deu aos Luzos a liberal constituicam." 



" THE king of terrors has again levelled his fatal dart at the house 

 of Braganza," said I, addressing my Spanish friend ; " Don Pedro 

 D'Alcantara has closed his eventful career, and sleeps with his 

 fathers." 



" The life of the ex-emperor and liberator/' he replied, <c was in- 

 deed as eventful and romantic as any that the page of modern history 

 can present. Driven in early youth by the insatiable ambition and 

 the victorious arms of Napoleon across the Atlantic, his subsequent 

 career offers a splendid and instructing example of the vicissitudes of 

 fortune. He founded one empire dismembered another octroya 

 three constitutions abdicated two crowns plucked another from the 

 brow of his usurping brother ; and, after liberating the land of his 

 birth from tyranny and oppression, after nobly propelling her in the 

 great route of freedom and civilization, he terminated his eventful and 

 glorious life amid the scenes of his infancy and youth sinking into 

 the arms of death in the very same room in which he was born." 



" Yes," I remarked, " with all his faults and his warmest admirers 

 cannot be blind to them the pen of the future historian will award a 

 proud place to this prince in the page of history." 



" The life of Don Pedro," continued my companion, " must be di- 

 vided into two parts ; like a pendulum it vibrated between good and 

 evil ; but the last two years of his life have shed so bright a halo 

 around his memory that it casts into the shade the faults of his youth. 

 His career in Brazil exhibits all those dark phases, which the ex- 

 amples of his family, and his own neglected and vicious education, 

 were so lamentably calculated to produce, and neutralized the many 

 fine qualities, and allowed to remain undeveloped the talents, with 

 which he was so liberally gifted by nature.* 



* His tutors, the Padre Antonio d'Arrabida and Mr. Rademacker, used to 

 speak in the highest terms of the natural abilities of this prince. By the 

 former he was impressed with that sentiment of piety which so distinguished 

 him through life. He evinced a very early taste for mechanics, and several 

 specimens of his skill are shewn at the Bio ; but his most decided talent was for 

 music. Among other pieces, he composed a mass and an opera. Don Pedro 

 possessed great muscular strength, and an iron constitution. After the pro- 

 clamation of Brazilian independence at the Villa de Piranga to the province of 

 Merino, he rode to Rio de Janeiro in an almost incredible space of time. When 

 it is considered that the road lay across mountains, over boundless plains, and 

 through dense forests, beneath the scorching rays of a tropical sun, an Osbal- 



