ment, will shortly take place in the sanatory and other regulations of the city, as the Emperor and his ministers seem to be fully alive to the necessity of it.

"Speak not evil of dignities," is a command we are bound to observe, and it is not very often we can with truth speak well of them. The present instance, however, we believe to be an exception, and we can quite concur in the following description :

"The present Emperor is in every respect admirably fitted for his high station. Born in the country, without the advantage of a knowledge of European life, and that finished tone of education it affords, but possessed of natural endowments of an exalted order, and having turned to the utmost advantage the opportunities of a studious and virtuous

youth, he carries with him the full national sympathies of the native Brazilians, the respect of the old Portuguese party, and the esteem of the whole foreign diplomatic body, to whom he dispenses the honours and hospitality of a prudently managed court. As the sovereign of a constitutional country, content to abide within the strict limits imposed by his coronation oath, his reign has been prosperous and happy. In his private capacity he is kind and attentive to all around him, as well as a close observer of passing events. Possessed of a benevolent heart, and actuated by a noble singleness of purpose, he knows how to direct the reins of government, without undue interference, or an injudicious exercise of his prerogative. It has often been emphatically said that the Emperor is not only the highest, but the best man in the country, both from his public conduct and his private virtues. The value of such a compliment is not enhanced, or probably we should say is not impaired, by any universal laxity and corruption around him, as in the case of another empire nearer home, wherein it is said that the principal personage is not only the most honest, but the only honest man in his own dominions. Probity and high-mindedness of every kind in public life are as general in Brazil as in any part of Europe, England itself certainly not excepted; consequently the standard the Emperor is measured by is one by no means conventional or equivocal, but is such as any sovereign in the western world might feel proud of having applied to himself. Certainly, in the matter of truthfulness, the rarest of all monarchic virtues, he has set an example to the royal brotherhood of kings that might be followed with infinite profit to the reputation of the regal race, and with corresponding advantage to their subjects in numerous instances. His Brazilian Majesty is admirably supported by an excellent and high-minded partner, who, like her

husband, is beloved by all classes in the empire. The imperial couple frequently attend public balls, and mix in social parties with citizens and foreigners, taking also the warmest interest in all local improvements or measures calculated to benefit the country, and to raise the character of their subjects. When the kind of life they are compelled to lead is fairly considered, and the extent of court intrigue necessarily prevailing where parties are so much divided, and respectively so potent, too much merit cannot be ascribed to the Emperor and Empress for the manner in which they conduct themselves, and the controlling influence they exercise over others. Every one who has been in Rio well knows how exceedingly popular he is, and how strong is the conviction that that popularity is most just and most deserved, though he never goes out of his way to obtain it by any ad captandum arts, or any conduct whatever that is not the result of sound judgment guiding an estimable nature--pp. 148-53.

Under

"Ten years ago the finances of Brazil were in very great embarrassment. all circumstances of distress and difficulty, Brazil had, indeed, paid, as she continues regularly to pay, the interest on her debt, thereby honourably distinguishing herself from other South American, and not a few European states. But, at that time, her expenditure largely exceeded her income. Gradually Brazil has reversed this state of things; instead of a heavy deficit, she has now a steadily increasing surplus, has been able to reduce the rate of interest on part of her foreign debt, is slowly reducing its capital, and is in a position to compete in the money-market of London with the most favoured European governments. Ten years ago Brazil was not a little embarrassed by the fiscal restrictions she had imposed on herself by her commercial treaties with other countries. Now she is free from all such embarrassments, has full powers over her own trading and financial system, and has no treaties at all with other states. Intermediately she raised for revenue purposes her tariff of custom duties; but now that she has a surplus to dispose of, her Government is engaged in reducing those duties, to the

enlargement, of course, of her commerce. The total funded domestic debt of the empire on the 31st of December last, amounted to 57,704,200,000 reis, and the funded debt of the province of Rio Janeiro to 8,940,000,000 reis. The total revenue for the present year, 1854, is estimated at about 32,353,000 milreis (£3,594,700), and the expenditure at about 29,633,706 milreis (£3,292,630). The income is chiefly derived from the ad valorem duty charged on all articles imported into Brazil, amounting in 1851-2 to £2,814,443; a low duty charged on the articles exported, amounting in the same year to £503,070; and rents, royalties on mines, &c. The estimated expenditure for 1853-4 is thus distributed: Ministry of the Interior, £412,355; Justice, £250,020; Foreign Affairs, £60,000; Marine, £452,138; War, £813,935; Finances, £1,304,162; total, £3,292,630.

"Ten years ago the Brazilian navy was small: it is now rising into importance; its courage and capacity were lately seen in the Plate; many of its younger officers have been reared in the British service, and from British yards it is yearly adding to its steam flotilla. It now consists of 1 frigate of 50 guns, 5 corvettes, 5 brigs, and 9 schooners, carrying together 188 guns; and 4 smaller vessels, carrying together 27 guns; 10 steamers, mounting 36 guns; with various unarmed ships and steamers, and several others are building. The Brazilian army has established its reputation at once for success, bravery, and humanity. Ten years ago Brazil had little external influence; now Brazil is obviously at the head of South American states, and has a distinct and separate part assigned to her in the destinies of the human race. Then she had but slow and dilatory intercourse with Europe; now she has two monthly steam services from England-another is being established from Lisbon; and Rio Janeiro is now only a

month's distance from London and Paris.

"Whilst London, Liverpool, and Lisbon are thus sweeping its coasts with steam, Manchester is lighting Brazilian cities with gas. Messrs. Peto and Jackson (the members for Norwich and Newcastle-under-Lyne), whose capital and connexions are interlacing Canada and the British North American provinces with a magnificent net-work of railways, are also, with other capitalists, about to bring their vast resources and long-practised experience to bear in a like manner in several of the Brazilian provinces, and doubtless with a like result, within as brief a period as the circumstances of the country and the obstacles to be overcome will possibly permit. The Government is opening up new roads, clearing away impediments in rivers, and is arranging the internal improvement of the empire on a large and comprehensive system. A great and a happier future is opening on Brazil-one calcu lated to advance and extend moral improve

ment and political freedom, as well as to promote material comfort."-pp. 179-81.

Brazil, indeed, seems destined, in spite of many drawbacks and deficiencies, to take the lead in South America in the great march of civilisation and improvement; and she has before her, in the development of her vast and rich territory, a grand future, if she only progress steadily in the path she has so worthily begun.

or

Mr. Hadfield gives us several chapters on Monte Video, Buenos Ayres, the river Parana, and the country of Paraguay. These are all more less, interesting, not from his manner of treating them, but from the interest attached to the places themselves, and to the latest account of them.

Nothing can well be more dry and paltry than Mr. Hadfield's method of description. His materials seem to have been collected on the "scrap-bag" principle, with every now and then a rag derived from the note-book of Sir W. Gore Ouseley, or other persons which, though not a very "purpureus pannus," just sufficiently attracts us to complete the examination of the whole bundle.

We have seldom met with a more desperate "hash" of words, objects, ideas, and metaphors, than in the following sentence, commencing the chapter called, "Up the Parana:"

"The important light in which England, and yet more especially those portions of England to whose mercantile wants the Company I represent administer, regarded the opening of the great confluents of the Plate, particularly those leading to the famed fairyland of Paraguay, so long guarded by the wondrous Ogre, Francia, naturally rendered me anxious to follow, for however trifling a distance, in the wake the French and British ministers had so lately pursued toward the capital of that mystic country, which, after almost half a century's total isolation from the rest of the world, they have brought into commercial relationship with Europe."

The only distinct idea we get out of such a haze of confusion as that, is one of the French and British ministers "pursuing their own wake,” and Mr. Hadfield following after them— somewhat on the principle of a merrygo-round at a fair, we suppose.

Some little interest attaches to the account of the home voyage, arising from the mention of the punctuality

with which the ocean steamers performed their voyages from Liverpool to the river Plate, and the consequent probability of a steady and regular traffic arising hereafter.

The book closes with a chapter on the Falkland Islands, and their capacity for settlement, and for a convict establishment, in which there is nothing new.

The work is illustrated by woodcuts, taken from the drawings of Sir W. Gore Ouseley and Sir C. Hotham. Whatever may have been the character of the original drawings, some of these cuts are very good, and some very poor indeed. There are also several maps, one, a very slight and indifferent one, of South America, is spoken of in the work itself in the highest terms, as exceeding any other, whereas we cannot call to mind a map of South America containing so little information, not half the places named in the work itself having any notice taken of them in the map.

Altogether, we have seldom met with a book professing so much, and performing so little, as Mr. Hadfield's. There is no country in the world more interesting to the physical geographer than South America, since there is none which combines so much variety of feature with so grand a simplicity of structure. Stretching from the centre of one tropic through the whole of the other, and extending very nearly into the region of perpetual winter that environs the antarctic circle to a greater distance than the arctic, it has almost every variety of climate, but all in a tempered and modified degree. It has the longest and most connected chain of volcanic mountains in the world, stretching from the snowy cone of Mount Darwin, in Terra del Fuego, through the whole line of the Andes to Caraccas, on the Caribbean sea, a distance of more than 4,500 statute miles. The peaks of this vast range, even under the equator, rear their heads far above the line of perpetual snow, which shows upon them like a perfectly level horizontal line, all above which is perfect white, while all below is arid and bare rock. This huge embattled wall has in places a double or triple line, the loftiest eminences not being on that which forms the water-shed, but on one of the lateral ones that is breached through and traversed by the water-channels.

VOL. XLIV.-NO. CCLX.

In consequence of the great mean height of the Andes, it is hardly possible for a moist wind to blow across it without having all its humidity condensed and squeezed out of it by the cold of the higher regions of the atmosphere. From whichever sea the wind may blow, it is so effectually drained of its moisture in crossing the mountains, that it rarely, if ever, is able to deposit any on the country beyond them.

Now over the larger part of the continent, or that included within the tropics, the principal wind, or that which traverses the higher part of the atmosphere, is almost invariably from the east. The trade winds blow home upon the whole shore of Brazil, and keep it bathed in moisture throughout the year. Hence the belt of forestland, fifty miles wide, known as the Matta, in the neighbourhood of Pernambuco. Having deposited this much of its superfluous moisture, however, the lower stratum of air becomes heated and dried as it proceeds into the country, though rain is still deposited on the tops and sides of the sierras and mountain chains which traverse the northern portion of Brazil, or run between the Amazon and Oronoco. These keep the country moistened and refreshed, and give rise to the many streams which form the lower tributaries of the Oronoco and the Amazon, and the chief part of those of the Paraguay, the Parana, and the Uruguay. Still, if that were all, this amount of moisture would become uncertain, and would probably undergo a gradual diminution, which would ultimately result in the desiccation of the country. Against this calamity the Andes are the great safeguard. Making a bend, so as to keep on the very western edge of the country, they receive into the hollow the last and the highest breath of both the N.E. and S.E. trade winds. Rising there to their greatest altitude, they forbid the passage of these currents of air until they reach such an elevation and such

a

low temperature that all their moisture is precipitated either as rain or snow; and the former at once, the latter when melted, is rolled back to the ocean, along the myriad streams of the Amazon and Oronoco, and the western branches of the Paraguay. The ever-falling ever-melting snows of the Andes, are most effectual in keeping up this perpetual stream of mois

ture, which clothes all the centre of South America, with its boundless forests and its verdant plains, so different from the burnt-up deserts of other tropical countries in the dry seasons. The rains would rush off in torrents and disappear, but the vast magazines of snow upon the Andes are most melted in the hottest and driest weather, and thus come in to prevent total dryness and sterility at the very period they are most wanted The whole of this action combines to keep all the tropical part of South America, east of the Andes, a well-watered and fertile country, traversed by innumerable rivers, among which is the largest river of the world, namely, the river Maranon or Amazon. Pass now across the Andes to the seaboard of Peru, and what a contrast do we instantly meet with an arid and rainless desert, with hardly a drop of water, and where, as at Arica, that necessary of life is obliged to be kept under lock and key by the inhabitants, and doled out by measure, as in other countries is the case with wine or spirits.

Let us now shift our latitude well out of the region of the tropics, to the country between 30° and 50° of south latitude. Here we are in a region where westerly winds blow almost as constantly as easterly winds do within the tropics. The consequence is, that with the reversal of the wind, the wet and dry sides of the Andes are reversed, and with the moisture go the forests and the verdure.

Instead of the dry deserts of Peru, we have the green and fertile shores of Chili, the island of Chiloe, where the rain is ceaseless, and the dark and dank forests that clothe all the lower slopes of the Andes and sea-border thence to Cape Horn. Instead of the forests of Brazil or the green plains of the Pampas, we have the stony steppes of Patagonia treeless, herbless, and waterless a vast plain of pebbles and shingle, through which a few rivers roll their waters from the Andes to the sea, without receiving a single tributary, or the accession of so much as a spring of water. The westerly wind here finds the Andes as inaccessible a barrier as the easterly wind does farther north; or if it itself

succeeds in scaling the heights, it is only after depositing the burden of all the moisture which it carried.

In thus sketching out the great features of the physical structure of South America, we do not wish it to be supposed that there are no others. A multitude of minor local circumstances produce local variations in the heat, the moisture, the fertility, and the healthiness of particular spots, or particular districts. We desire chiefly to call attention to the fact, that an equally simple and true description cannot be given of any other of the great continents of the globe.

South America consists, in fact, of but one great range of mountains, rising almost directly from the sea, on the west, and having one great plain to the east of them, this plain being materially affected by only one minor range of mountains, namely, the coast ranges of Brazil.

The high lands forming the border between Brazil and Guyana have no effect upon this plain, for the rivers on each side of them—namely, the Amazon and Oronoco are, most singular to say, united by a natural canal, called that of Cassiquari, so that there is no watershed between them. That the basins of drainage of two such large rivers should be so united, is a circumstance of which there is no second example in the world, and it is of the utmost rarity to find one even on the smallest scale. We do not know of one, for instance, even in Ireland, although so many of our rivers traverse the same plain.

The coast ranges of Brazil, although they do form a watershed between the basin of the Amazon and that of the Plate, yet do not greatly affect the interior, where the head waters of the great Rio Madeira and that of the Paraguay, appear to overlap, if not to interlace.

A country having the extent and the structure thus briefly described, thus favoured by natural position, and traversed in all directions by natural highways, must, sooner or later, be the home of millions of the human race. The few quarrelsome and indolent people that now loiter over its plains,*

or vegetate on its river banks, or "let the time pass its own self" in its cities, are as nothing to the crowds that some time or other will cover the whole land with industry, activity, and wealth. It is probable that South America alone could, if properly cultivated and turned to account, contain and support in comfort the whole of the present human race. There is, therefore, no a priori reason why its inhabitants should not ultimately reach that amount.

This, which appears now but as a

magnificent dream, is possible and not improbable, and the attempt to open up its rivers and its ports to the agency of steam navigation, and the enterprise of the great Anglo-Saxon race-English and American - is one calculated to bring it about.

Therefore it is that we have thought it worth while thus briefly to bring the subject before the reader's attention, and therefore it is only that we have thought Mr. Hadfield's book worthy of our own.

AGAIN to the ghostly tapestry; again to the silent chamber-to the old Venetian mirror and the midnight moon; but not again to dreams. I felt too much excited to sleep. The whole house seemed heavy with mystery. The very air seemed to be thickening white with phantasmal forms; phantom voices seemed to float through the open window; the white, dumb moon looked wise, as if it knew strange things, and hooked its spiteful horn at me; faint footsteps seemed to flutter up the stairs; faint footsteps in the garden below; such devilry did fancy play with me.

I

At last the wakeful night ebbed off to morning, and the haggard skirts of the dark sky began to be ravelled with uncertain light in the east. dressed myself, and went down stairs, and out upon the terrace. The landscape was still misty and gray. There I watched the night-a great scroll, written with stars. -rolled slowly up, and withdrawn by God till evening. Slowly uprose the amber sun through clear, cold skies, pearl-white, and dewy; I watched him pause above the breathless hills, and break the great seal of the day. Then the courts of heaven were filled with light, and the sleepy fields seemed to unclose their misty eyes, and get thoroughly awake.

Here I paced the still hours away till breakfast-time. Morton did not appear, but sent me a message to say that, as soon as I had breakfasted, he would be glad to see me.

When I entered his room, I found him sitting at a little table, with a small iron box open before him. He was tossing papers out of the box; the floor was strewn with them-some he retained, some he discarded; a silver casket was open on the table; there was a long soft tress of silky golden hair in it. He seemed pale and languid, with a fatigued look in the eyes, as though he, too, had passed a sleepless night.

"Pray sit down, Arthur," said he; "it is time that I should relieve whatever curiosity you may feel respecting what you saw and heard last night. I told you, you may remember, yesterday in the churchyard, that all should shortly be explained. Providence seems to have suddenly thrown you into the inmost circle of my life; it is well that you should know all about it and if you are not disinclined to hear a long story, and a somewhat strange one, I will relate it to you now."

I pressed him to do so, and Morton then began this narrative of his life, which I shall endeavour to record, as nearly as I can remember it, in his own words:

MORTON'S STORY.

MANY years ago, towards the close of a warm May evening (ah! those old summers had twice the warmth of these), I entered the little village which you see from these windows, on foot,