1831.] [ 129 ] 



ANECDOTES OF BRAZIL. 



ONE thing above all others which extends our acquaintance with hu- 

 man affairs, and enlarges and enlightens the mind what most eminently 

 distinguishes the present age from every other, is the facility of loco- 

 motion. As little is thought now-a-days of circumnavigating the globe, 

 as was formerly of travelling to the northern extremity of our island. In 

 fact, no one can pretend to the rank of a traveller who has not either 

 pic-nicked at the foot of the Pyramids., climbed the heaven-kissing peaks 

 of the Himalaya range, hunted the ostrich on the Pampas, or listened to 

 the deafening roar of Niagara. With what ineffable contempt will this 

 superb locomotive creature look down on his fellow, who merely tours 

 over the European Continent, dreaming away his life amidst the frivolities 

 of its numerous capitals, but deriving no more information of men and 

 manners than what strikes his organs of vision through the windows of 

 his well-padded travelling- carriage ! Who would now, with a grain of 

 the odi profanum vulgus in his composition, condescend to ascend 

 Mont Blanc, vulgarized as it has lately been by the profanation of 

 Cockney footsteps ! The exclusive has now literally nothing left but a 

 voyage to the North Pole, or an attempt to discover the course of the 

 mysterious Niger. 



The country that, more than any other, has engaged the attention of 

 mankind in our day, is South America. We do not say that the 

 people of this continent are either, on account of their character or their 

 actual achievements, the most interesting 011 the face of the globe ; but, 

 in their accidental position, they unquestionably are so. Their grand 

 experiment in government and social regeneration ; their trial in their 

 voyage onwards to a mighty fulfilment, or a still mightier failure, we 

 cannot but feel places them as no other nation is, for concentrating on 

 them the gaze of a liberal and philosophical curiosity. 



So far back as the days of old Montaigne and Montesquieu, the inde- 

 pendence of the Spanish- American colonies was a political problem, the 

 solution of which had occupied the attention of speculative politicians ; 

 while of late years the revolution which had taken place in men's minds 

 on the subject of colonies, had enabled the practical statesman to demon- 

 strate the event with mathematical certainty. The boundless extent of 

 these magnificent colonies the colossal proportions of .their natural fea- 

 tures their riches, real or fabulous added to the romantic halo shed 

 around them by the history of their early conquest had, in every age 

 since their first discovery powerfully inflamed the imagination of men, 

 and generated a wild and chimerical spirit of adventure. It is not, there- 

 fore, singular that, at the earliest dawn of independence in the Western 

 World, men of every rank and denomination should have looked towards 

 it as an extended field, for the development of some long-cherished 

 scheme of daring ambition, or all-grasping avarice. 



The martial spirits of Europe, whose sphere of action had been nar- 

 rowed by the setting of the sun of Napoleon, flocked in crowds to the 

 patriot standards. The speculative politician dreamed that the moment 

 for the realization of his Utopia was at length arrived. It was, however, 

 in the mercantile world that the vibrations of the chord excitement was 

 felt with the most powerful effect. The Spanish El Dorado, so long 

 closed to the other nations of the world by the singular system of colo- 

 nial policy of the mother-country, was at length brought within the 

 M.M. New Series. Vol. XI. No. 62. S 



