178 JOURNAL. 
met his generous conqueror, nor the gentle and modest manner in 
which they were received and put an end to by His Lordship. After 
this had passed, I did not wonder that, notwithstanding our disap- 
pointment in the steam-vessel, His Lordship appeared in better 
spirits than I have yet seen him in. 
July 8th.— To-day, a young man born in Cundinamarca, but 
brought up in Quito, came to stay with me, that I may put him in 
the way of improving a great natural talent for drawing. He has 
been long on board Lord Cochrane’s ship, in I know not what capa- 
city, and has displayed considerable taste in some sketches of cos- 
tume, &c. The people of Quito pride themselves on retaining that 
excellence in painting which distinguished their predecessors of the 
time of Pizarro. Of course the Christian priests have introduced 
European models and European practice; but the talent for the 
imitative arts is said to be inherent in all, or almost all the Quitejfios ; 
and it is certain that the painters, whether of portraits or history, 
that are to be met with in various parts of South America, are almost 
universally Quitefios. My scholar is gentle and persevering; rather 
indolent ; possessed of good sense, and a strong poetical feeling. 
If I had him in Europe, where he could see good pictures, and above 
all, good drawings, I have no doubt but he would be a painter ; as 
it is, seeing nothing much better than his own, there is little chance 
of very great improvement. I have heard extravagant praises of 
the pictures of various South American painters; but these were 
given by persons who probably never saw a first-rate picture in 
Europe, especially as they often in the same breath extolled their 
sculpture also to the skies. Now, on enquiry, I found that all the 
sculpture practised here consists in carving the heads, hands, and 
feet of the saints to be dressed : these are painted afterwards, and I 
have no doubt give a strong impression of reality ; but that is not 
sculpture. It perhaps may come near to Shakspeare’s Hermione, 
the maker of which “ would beguile nature of her custom, so per- 
fectly is he her ape.” But sculpture is not the ape, but the perfecter 
of nature; so I hear with distrust all these splendid accounts of the 
