STATE OF SOCIETY IN LIMA. 



283 



first time fairly awakened to the real miseries and 

 dangers of life, could not all at once acquire the 

 faculty of balancing motives, or of distinguishing 

 what was useful and secure in their new state, 

 from what was ruinous or degrading. In short, 

 the circumstances to which they had been sud- 

 denly brought'were so totally new, that, consider- 

 ing all things, their selfishness and alarm were 

 very excusable. As these feelings were not con- 

 fined to any one class, but pervaded the whole, 

 social intercourse was at an end ; and we took 

 leave of Lima, for the second time, without much 

 regret. We had now seen it in all the miseries of a 

 siege, and again in all the distraction and exulta- 

 tion of the first moments of a revolution, before 

 anything had settled into its proper station, and 

 before confidence had again sprung up, in place 

 of the universal distrust which preceded the ca- 

 tastrophe. 



