SANTIAGO. 209 
so dexterously, as to show she was well accustomed to the manceuvre. 
However, the young ladies, and all who would be thought so, are 
leaving off these ugly habits fast. 
At about ten o’clock we left the palace, and found our young 
people at home still engaged in their minuets. I sat with them a short 
time, and then came to my alto to write the journal of this my second 
day in Santiago, with which I am very well pleased. 
27th. — Visited Dofia Mercedes de Solar, whose father, Juan 
Henriques Rosalis, was one of the members of the first junta of the 
revolutionary government in 1810. She is a very pretty, and very 
polished woman; seems well acquainted with French authors, and 
speaks French extremely well. I found her sitting in the bed- 
room, which, as I have noticed, is often used as a drawing-room ; 
she was surrounded by some lovely children, and had with her 
some pretty nieces ;.books and needlework were on a small French 
table by her, and before her was a large chafingdish of well-burnt 
charcoal. The dish was of massy silver, beautifully embossed, set in 
a frame of curiously inlaid wood; and there was a wrought silver 
spoon to stir the coals with. I have seen several of the same kind 
before ; but it seemed here in keeping with the rest of the room, 
and the persons. The stately French bed, the open piano, the guitar, 
the ormoulu time-piece, the ladies, the children, the books, the work, 
and the flowers in French porcelain, with the rich Chilian brassiere, 
into which perfume is now and then cast, made a charming picture, 
which, lighted as it was from a high window behind me, I heartily 
wished in proper hands to copy. I would not have changed the 
purple pelisse of the mother, setting off her white and rather full 
throat, or even the pale looks of little Vicente, for all the inventions 
of all the painters that ever tricked out interiors with fullest effect. 
I have a particular interest in Vicente, besides his being a clever 
child. He came with me in the Doris from Rio, whither he had 
gone in the Owen Glendower. He suffered from cold in coming 
round the Horn, and I had him with me in the cabin as much as 
circumstances would permit. One day we were speaking of the 
EE 
