GENERAL IMPRESSIONS OF BRAZIL. 



503 



restraint of a woman's life, we are not justified, however 

 false these ideas may seem to us, in considering the present 

 generation as responsible for them ; they are also too 

 deeply rooted to be changed in a day. 



On several occasions I have alluded in terms of praise to 

 the working of the institutions of Brazil. Nothing can be 

 more liberal than the Constitution of the land ; every 

 guaranty is therein secured to the freest assertion of all 

 the natural rights of man. And yet there are some fea- 

 tures in the habits of the people, probably the results of 

 an antiquated social condition, which impede the progress 

 of the nation. It should not be forgotten that the white 

 population of Brazil is chiefly descended from the Portu- 

 guese, and that of all Europe Portugal is the country which 

 at the time of the discovery and settlement of Brazil, had 

 least been affected by the growth of our modern civilization. 

 Indeed, the great migrations which convulsed Europe in 

 the Middle Ages, and the Reformation, upon which the new 

 social order chiefly rests, have scarcely affected Portugal ; 

 so that Roman ways, Roman architecture, and a degenerate 

 Latin were still flourishing when her Transatlantic colo- 

 nies were founded ; and, as in all colonies, the conditions 

 of the mother country were but slowly modified. No 

 wonder, therefore, that the older structures of Rio de 

 Janeiro should recall, in the most surprising manner, 

 the architecture of ancient Rome, as disclosed by the ex- 

 cavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and that the social 

 condition of Brazil should remind us of the habits of a 

 people among whom women played so subordinate a part. 

 It seems to me that even now the administration of the 

 provinces, as in the Roman civilization, is calculated to en- 

 force the law, rather than to develop the material resources 



