VALPARAISO. 157 



of heart, and as I have experienced the latter from all, it scarcely 

 becomes me to complain of the roughness of the coat of the pine- 

 apple while enjoying the flavour of the fruit. * Of many of these I 

 may say,— 



" That still they fill affection's eye, 

 Obscurely wise and coarsely kind." 



Yesterday a very interesting person sailed from hence for Lima, 

 Mr. Thompson, one of those men whom real Christian philanthropy 

 has led across the ocean and across the Andes to diffuse the benefits 

 of education among his fellow-creatures. He had spent some time 

 in Santiago, where, under the patronage of the supreme director, he 

 has established a school of mutual instruction on the plan of Lan- 

 caster. He has been in Valparaiso some time superintending the 

 formation of a similar school, to the maintenance of which part of 

 the revenue of a suppressed monastery has been appropriated. The 

 governor, with the Cabildo and military officers in procession, accom- 

 panied Mr. Thompson on the opening of the school, so that all the 

 importance was given it that was possible, and I am happy to say 

 with good effect. It is now, though so recent, well attended, and I 

 have met many of the country people bringing in their children in 

 the morning to go thither, f The immediate wants of Chile are 

 education in the upper and middling classes, and a greater number 

 of working hands. I ought, I suppose, to say productive labourers ; 

 but hands, both indirectly and directly productive, are wanting. Not 

 a hundredth part of the soil is cultivated, and yet it produces from 

 sixteen fold on the bare coast, to a hundred fold of wheat in the 

 upper country ; ordinarily sixty every where, and in some spots 

 ninety of barley, and so on of maize ; not to mention that the fruits 

 transplanted hither seem to have adopted the soil, and even to im- 

 prove in quality and in quantity in this favoured climate. 



* Bishop Home, speaking of Dr. Johnson, says, that " to refuse to acknowledge the 

 merit of such a man on account of the coarseness of his behaviour, what is it but to 

 throw away the pine-apple, and to allege for a reason the roughness of its coat ?" 



f Mr. Thompson has been solemnly declared a free citizen of Chile by the government. 



