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In the grand business of eating, the Chilenos do not display much refinement. At one of the first houses in Santiago

"The dinner was larger than would be thought consistent with good taste; but every thing was well dressed, though with a great deal of oil and garlic. Fish came among the last things. All the dishes were carved on the table, and it is difficult to resist the pressing invitations of every moment to eat of every thing. The greatest kindness is shewn by taking things from your own plate, and putting it on that of your friend; and no scruple is made of helping any dish before you with the spoon or knife you have been eating with, or even tasting or eating from the general dish without the intervention of a plate. In the intervals between the courses, bread-and-butter and olives were presented."

The ladies of Chile have but recently learned to sit on chairs :

"Now, in lieu of the estrada, there are usually long carpets placed on each side of the room, with two rows of chairs as close together as the knees of the opposite parties will permit, so that the feet of both meet on the carpet. The graver people place themselves with their backs to the wall, the young ladies opposite; and, as the young men drop in to join the tertulla, or evening meeting, they place them. selves behind the ladies; and all conversation, general or particular, is carried on, without ceremony, in half whispers.

"When a sufficient number of persons is collected, the dancing begins, always with minuets; which, however, are little resembling the grave and stately dance we have seen in Europe.

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"The minuets are followed by allemandes, quadrilles, and Spanish dances. The latter are exceedingly graceful; and, danced as I have seen them here, are like the poetical dances of ancient sculpture and modern painting; but then, the waltz never brought youth, and mirtb, and beauty, into such close contact with a partner."

It is very customary in Chile to visit for the purpose of taking matee, a beverage similar in its use to tea; the herb (which comes from Paraguay,) resembles dried senna in appearance.

"A small quantity of it is put into the little vase with a proportion of sugar, and sometimes a bit of lemon peel, the water is poured boiling on it, and it is instantly sucked up through a tube about six inches long. This is the great luxury of the Chilenos, both male and female. The first thing in the morning is a matte, and the first thing after the afternoon siesta is a matte."

The laws are as numerous and as complicated as the greatest lovers of litigation and "glorious uncertainty," can reasonably desire. We rather suspect that even our cartload of statutes at large, would feel it necessary to "hide their

diminished heads," if placed alongside the 72,000 legal enactments of Chile. Although the Spanish government has been taxed with indolence, their activity in legislation must have been most praiseworthy and conspicuous. Many, however, of these valuable laws are enjoying the luxury of profound repose; and the people are so ignorant as to think it scarcely worth while to awaken them. In most other countries there is some proportion between law and lawyers, and an increase of the one seldom fails to augment the other; Chile is an exception to this general rule. In physic, the Chilenos display as little taste; for they cannot be persuaded into liver complaints, nor induced, by the most elegant preparations, to bring on an affection of the nerves and hence there is scarcely a physician of eminence, nor even a surgeon to be found; while the varieties of dentist, cupper, &c. are entirely unknown. Fortunately for the inhabitants of Valparaiso, which contains 16,000 souls, an apothecary has been induced to reside among them; and, in order that our readers may judge of the little encouragement afforded to pharmaceutical talent, we will just introduce them into the cabinet of this neglected son of Esculapius:

"Returning from my shopping, I stopped at the apothecary's (for there is but one,) to buy some powder-blue, which, to my surprise, I found could only be procured there. I fancy it must resemble an apothecary's of the fourteenth century, for it is even more antique looking than those I have seen in Italy or France. The man has a taste for natural history; so that, besides his jars of old-fashioned medicines, inscribed all over with the celestial signs, oddly intermixed with packets of patent medicines from London, dried herbs, and filthy gallipots, there are fishes' heads and snakes' skins; in one corner a great condor tearing the flesh from the bones of a lamb; in another, a monster sheep, having an adscititious leg growing from the skin of his forehead; and there are chickens, and cats, and parrots, altogether producing a combination of antique dust and recent filth, far exceeding any thing I ever beheld."

Our notice of the political state of Chile will be very short. Many errors have been committed, and many opportunities lost, but much of evil has been removed; and the existing state of Chile is that of improvement: we have hopes of the future, but time will be a powerful agent in the work of amelioration. The inhabitants are daily acquiring knowledge, and, having tasted its sweets, will scarcely be prevailed upon to relinquish them: their constant intercourse with Europeans, and the numbers of enlightened individuals who have settled among them, will contribute to dispel the mists of ignorance and prejudice, which, in some favourite points, at present, attach firmly to their nature.

We cannot, as critics, help lamenting the inflated style and

bad taste in which their public addresses and state documents are drawn up, resembling, in manner at least, the halfludicrous productions of the heroes of the French Revolution: and we are sorry to observe the name of a British nobleman, "who has done the state some service," appended to proclamations, which, whatever may be their political merit, are in this particular eminently ridiculous. We have already said, that the climate of this country is most delightful, lying between the 30th and 56th degrees of latitude; it is sufficiently warm, while the cool air from the mountains, or the refreshing sea-breeze, maintain that equality of temperature which is so congenial to our nature; but, with all its advantages, Chile has one tremendous drawback. It is extremely subject to earthquakes, a hopeless evil, far beyond the reach of human means to remedy or prevent. The skilful sailor, in a stout and well-built vessel, encounters boldly the storm and tempest, and trusts with confidence in the resources of his art. Science has disarmed lightning of a portion at least of its destructive power; but an earthquake can neither be avoided by flight, nor evaded by skill: it attacks us in our strong hold, it gives no warning, but rushes on us in a moment. On the 19th of November, 1822, many towns in Chile were nearly destroyed, and incalculable damage sustained, by one of these appalling visitations. We shall lay before our readers the following description of its commencement:

"The lightning continued to play uninterruptedly over the Andes until after dark, when a delightful and calm moonlight night followed a quiet and moderately warm day. We returned reluctantly to the house on account of the invalid, and were sitting quietly conversing, when, at a quarter past ten, the house received a violent shock, with a noise like the explosion of a mine; and Mr. Bennet, starting up, ran out, exclaiming, 'An earthquake, an earthquake! for God's sake, follow me!' I, feeling more for Glennie than any thing, and fearing the night air for him, sat still; he, looking at me to see what I would do, did the same until, the vibration still increasing, the chimneys fell, and I saw the walls of the house open. Mr. Bennet again cried from without, 'For God's sake, come away from the house!' So we rose and went to the veranda, meaning, of course, to go by the steps; but the vibration increased with such violence, that, hearing the fall of a wall behind us, we jumped down from the little platform to the ground; and were scarcely there, when the motion of the earth changed from a quick vibration to a rolling like that of a ship at sea, so that it was with difficulty that Mr. Bennet and I supported Glennie. The shock lasted three minutes; and, by the time it was over, every body in and about the house had collected on the lawn, excepting two persons; one the wife of a mason, who was shut up in a small room which she could not open; the other Carillo, who, in escaping from

his room by the wall which fell, was buried in the ruins, but happily preserved by the lintel falling across him."

Although there was a perfect calm, the trees were agitated in the most violent manner, and at times their topmost branches were bent nearly to the ground. A disagreeable sensation, resembling sea-sickness, comes over persons exposed to these violent shocks, which were repeated at irregular intervals, but almost incessantly, during the night, seldom a period of more than two minutes elapsing between them. At Santiago much mischief was done; but Valparaiso was nearly destroyed, whole streets being converted into heaps of ruins. At Quillota

"The market-place was filled with booths, and bowers of myrtle and roses; under which, feasting and revelry, dancing, fiddling, and masking, were going on, and the whole was a scene of gay dissipation, or rather dissoluteness. The earthquake came,-in an instant all was changed. Instead of the sounds of the viol and the song, there arose a cry of Misericordia! Misericordia!' and a beating of the breast, and a prostration of the body; and the thorns were plaited into crowns, which the sufferers pressed on their heads till the blood streamed down their faces, the roses being now trampled under foot. Some ran to their falling houses, to snatch thence children forgotten in the moments of festivity, but dear in danger. The priests wrung their hands over their fallen altars, and the chiefs of the people fled to the hills. Such was the night of the nineteenth at Quillota.”

There is much truth in the following remarks, suggested by the state in which the author found the inhabitants of Valparaiso :

"As I approached nearer, the tents and huts of the wretched fugitives claimed my undivided attention; and there indeed I saw the calamity in a light it had not hitherto appeared in. Rich and poor, young and old, masters and servants, were huddled together in intimacy frightful even here, where the distinction of rank is by no means so broad as in Europe. I can quite understand, now, the effect of great general calamities in demoralizing and loosening the ties of society. The historians of the middle ages tell of the pestilence that drove people forth from the cities to seek shelter in the fields from contagion, and returned them with a worse plague, in the utter corruption of morals into which they had fallen. Nor was • the plague in London' without its share of the moral scourge. are the uses of adversity' to individuals and to educated men; but I fear, that whatever cause makes large bodies of men very miserable, makes them also very wicked."

'Sweet

During six weeks the earth continued to experience occasional shocks of greater or less force, and generally several in the course of each day; and even when no otherwise perceptible, the surface of mercury proved it to be in a constant

state of agitation. The permanent effect of this convulsion was the retirement of the sea along the coasts, leaving about four feet less water in the harbour than before. We are far from being willing to subscribe to any of the theories that have been invented on the subject of earthquakes; the best of them have their weak places, and it will probably be long before this very interesting problem is satisfactorily solved.

In concluding our remarks upon the work before us, we may observe, that the author has arrived at the best means of information, and has intimately mixed with the highest circles. She appears to have been an attentive observer of what was passing around her, and a diligent collector of facts. We are, however, not quite sure that she has dispensed them in the best order; indeed, the form of a journal necessarily facili tates the introduction of much, which, though it may be interesting to the individual, can have little claim upon the public. About one-fourth of the work consists of an introduction, which is exclusively political, and contains a spirited sketch of the persons and events which have occupied the theatres of Chilean independence. A copious appendix of 100 pages, written by Mr. Yates, contains the history of Jose Miguel Carrera and his brothers, who took so conspicuous a share in the early part of the revolution, and whose melo-dramatic adventures, hair-breadth escapes, and disgraceful death, seem scarcely to belong to the period of the nineteenth century. We are favoured with a liberal supply of state papers of various degrees of importance, and one of which, an address from the Director O'Higgins, is printed in the Arancanian language, which, we doubt not, is abundantly sweet, flowing, and persuasive, notwithstanding the length, and apparent impracticability of its words, most of which contain twenty, and some above thirty letters. The English have been accused of making long speeches, in spite of the monosyllables with which their language is crowded; but what limits could be assigned to an orator who came armed with words like this,-Lacctamasinchiscunallamantatac. The author has printed several letters to the government, and addresses to the people, by Lord Cochrane; some of which are well written, and breathe an independent spirit, which is congenial to the English character. We can make every allowance for the warmth of private friendship; but, we confess, we were not prepared for the following rhapsody:

"". How my heart yearned to think, that when our own country lost his service, England

"Like a base Ethiope, threw a pearl away,

Richer than all its kind.'"

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