RECOLLECTIONS OF BRAZIL. 301 



attendances and consultations, very numerous; and although I never 

 received or sent a single letter, but that enclosing the bill, the post- 

 age was very large. My account, in this transaction, stood thus: I 

 gained disappointment and a mourning ring. I lost time which will 

 not return; many sums of money laid out, as I thought, at interest, 

 on my dear friend, during my intimacy with him ; and 44/. 6*. 8d. 

 for a lawyer's bill, to discharge which very nearly ruined me. I was 

 cured of legacies and law ; and my example may, I hope, prove a 

 warning to all young and aspiring toad-eaters, to beware how they 



Jlace their trust in one of their own profession; for, my dear friend, 

 believe I mentioned, gained his fortune by toad-eating to his uncle. 

 Adopt as your maxim, never to trust one of your class. 



Your well wisher, 



TOADY. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF BRAZIL. 

 No. I. 



THE INDIANS. 



EVERY country and every age has beheld some science the object 

 of preference; while others languished in a state of contempt. 

 Mathematics and dialetics, under the successors of Alexander 

 eloquence and politics, under the Roman republic History and 

 poetry, in the age of Augustus grammar and jurisprudence, under 

 the lower empire the philosophy of the schools, in the 13th century 

 belles-lettres, to the middle of the 17th century have, in turn, 

 commanded the admiration of mankind. Physics and mathematics 

 are now on the throne ; and what distinguishes the present age from 

 every other, is the facility of locomotion. As little is now thought 

 of circumnavigating the globe, as, fifty years ago, of making the 

 tour of our own island. Your very cockney aspires now-a-days to 

 the character of a Marco Polo, and may be seen Byronising by moon- 

 light, amid the ruins of the Coliseum, or exciting the scorn of the 

 Hungarian, by an exhibition of his horsemanship, on the Prater at 

 Vienna. But no one, in this locomotive era, ought to be admitted 

 to the rank of a traveller, who has not pic-nic'd at the foot of the 

 Great Pyramid shot kangaroos on the plains of Australia taken a 

 cup of bear's milk with the Emperor of China or, should he rather 

 choose the western hemisphere for the theatre of his operations, he 

 must have played the champolion, ^amid the ruins of Cuzco have 

 eaten, after a hard day's ostrich hunting, carne con cuero, with the 

 Guacha on the Pampas, or have partaken of a fricassee of parrots, or 

 the leg of a devil'd monkey, with an Indian chief, on the banks of 

 the mighty Amazon then, indeed, he may be considered as a tra- 

 velled man. Such were the reflections that shot through my mind, 

 as I strolled down Bond Street, towards the close of the season, in 

 the year 1826. All the world were migrating ; I caught the infec- 



