QUINTERO. 323 
Chilena washerwoman has decidedly the advantage, in elegance of 
appearance, over our ladies of the suds at home; but whether it be 
for the advantage of the community that the daughters of the judges 
and justices should so employ themselves, I leave to graver persons 
to determine ; —though I think there is something against it in a 
statute of the first year of George the Third’s reign, wherein the 
independence of judges is considered as necessary to their upright- 
ness. But this is a long way from England. 
Dec. 2d.— We have felt but one shock early this morning. I 
remember exclaiming on the apathy of the people of Carracas, who 
returned to rebuild their houses when the earthquakes returned only 
once in six hours, or some such period; and that was after several 
months passed without any considerable convulsion. But man is 
the creature of habit ; and though it is scarcely a fortnight since all 
around us, “ temple and tower, fell to the ground,” and though we 
ourselves are living in tents and huts pitched round our ruined dwell- 
ing, we pursue our business, and even our amusements, as if nothing 
had happened, and lie down to sleep as confidently as if we had not 
lately seen the earth whereon we repose reeling to and fro. We 
have time too to turn to history and poetry, to compare the descrip- 
tions of men who did not feel the fearful times with the passing facts. 
One of these appears to me to have superior beauty and truth: 
Childe Harold is telling of the day of Thrasimene, when, in the fury 
of the battle, “ an earthquake reeled unheededly away.” 
«© The earth to them was as a rolling bark 
Which bore them to eternity; they saw 
The ocean round, but had no time to mark 
The motions of their vessel ; Nature’s law, 
In them suspended, reck’d not of the awe 
Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds 
Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw 
From their down-toppling nests, and bellowing herds 
Stumble o’er heaving plains, and man’s dread hath no words.” 
