VALPARAISO. 299 
the execution : but it is doubtful if the government, which, like some 
others, is sometimes penny-wise and pound-foolish, will think it ex- 
pedient to part with the necessary sums to put its ships in order. 
Yet if it do not, the coasts must be left defenceless, or new ships 
bought at an exorbitant price. 
I have been looking back at my journal of the last six weeks, and 
it struck me as I read it that it is something like a picture gallery ; 
where you have historical pieces, and portraits, and landscapes, and 
still life, and flowers, side by side. Every other thing written pretends 
to be a whole in itself, and to be either history, or landscape, or por- 
trait ; and generally the author finishes it for a cabinet picture. But 
my poor journal, written in a new country and in a time of agitation, 
to say the least of it, can pretend to no unity of design; for can I 
foresee what will happen to-morrow? And, as my heroes and he- 
roines (by-the-bye, I have but a scanty proportion of the latter,) are all 
independent personages, I cannot, like a novel-writer, compel them 
to figure in my pages to please me, but they govern themselves ; and 
that, where to write a journal is only a kind of substitute for reading 
the new books of the day, which I should assuredly do at home, is 
perhaps as well: the uncertainty of the end keeps up the interest. 
