VALPARAISO. 179 
pictures and sculpture by native hands that adorn the churches of 
Quito and Lima. Such as I have seen here, in the ceiling of the 
Merced for instance, are well for the place; and are evidently the 
work of some of the Spanish monks, who have decorated their 
churches with as much of splendour in the taste of Europe as their 
circumstances would permit. The likenesses I have seen are cer- 
tainly a degree better than the portraits of China, but they are equally 
stiff; and though the Madonas have an air of grace something like 
those ancient ones painted before the revival of art, they are ill 
drawn, and, above every thing, the extremities are hardly defined 
at all. I do not believe that there is a single painter, native or 
foreigner, now in the whole of Chile. I am sorry that they have 
something of more pressing importance than the fine arts to attend to, 
July 10th. — Capt. breakfasted with me, and afterwards 
was so kind as to accompany me in a round of calls, by way of re- 
turning the visits of the English ladies here. It is curious, at this 
distance from home, to see specimens of such people as one meets no 
where else but among the Brangtons, in Madame D’Arblay’s Ceci- 
lia, or the Mrs. Eltons of Miss Austin’s admirable novels; and yet 
these are, after all, the people most likely to be here. The country 
isnew ; the government unacknowledged by our own; the merchants 
are chiefly such as sell by commission, for houses established in 
larger and older states ; and, as all Englishmen, from the highest to 
the lowest, love to have their home with them, the clerks, who fall 
naturally into these sort of employments, either bring or find suit- 
able wives: therefore society, as far as relates to the English, is of a 
very low tone. The sympathies of the heart, however, are as lively 
here as in more polished circles ; and, while one turns one moment 
in disgust from the man who familiarly calls his wife by one nick- 
name, and his daughter by another; yet the next, one looks at him 
with respect as the benevolent receiver and comforter of the sick and 
the dying, whose house has been the asylum, and his family the 
attendants, of more than one of his countrymen, who have ended their 
being thus far from their friends and native land. 
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