BISHOP OF RIO DE JANEIRO.

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every thing in the establishment was marked with the most primitive and self-denied simplicity.

He is a liberal-minded and upright man, and from the purity and benevolence of his character, very popular and highly venerated in the city and throughout the diocese. His face is set against vice in all its forms and wherever seen. The licentiousness of the court is openly reproved by him, and he visits the palace, I am told, only when commanded by the emperor. He offered to dismiss our carriage and send us home in the evening in his own if we would remain to a lenten dinner with him, but we declined the civility.

In the course of conversation he made many inquiries about the Sandwich Islands, their language, former habits, improvements, and present state; professed his interest in the general extension of Christianity, his respect for the character of the Moravian and other missionaries; with an assurance of his love for all defenders of the Cross-saying, that his library contained the works of many distinguished Protestants, those of Lardner, Butler, Warburton, &c. At the end of half an hour we took our leave, much gratified with this specimen of the clergy of Brazil.

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CITY PRISON.

LETTER XI.

PRISONS, JUDICIARY, AND SLAVE TRADE.

City Prison.-Judiciary.-General Aspect of the City.-Political State of the Empire.-Botanic Garden.

IN leaving the episcopal palace on Saturday we walked near one of the city prisons, the grated windows of which on the street allow a full view of the interior of two of the apartments. The spectacle presented was truly affecting: criminals of every age, from beardless boys to gray-headed men of every colour, from the jet of Congo to the fair skin of Germany, and probably of every crime, were seen crowded together in haggard filth and rags. Many of them appeared to be hardened villains, scowling upon us in Satanic impudence in return to the look of compassion given to their misery, and I drew back in horror from the sight of such a den, no less the receptacle, than it must necessarily be the school of vice.

It presents a fair sample, I am told, of the prison discipline, not only of the empire, but of the whole southern continent, and shows how wide a field there is, in its fermenting kingdoms, for the philanthropic exertions of one breathing the spirit and clothed in the mantle of a Howard.

The whole judiciary of the empire is in a state worthy the darkest ages of Portugal; and to effect

a reform, to the praise of the emperor, has been a leading feature in his late addresses to the Cortes. At present there is no process of form in an arrest, no habeas corpus, and no notice of the witnesses to appear against the accused. The time of trial is left entirely to the accuser, while the subject of the arrest, whether innocent or guilty, is in oppressive confinement, without an allowance of food, or any means of bringing his innocence to a legal test.

But for the charities of the monastic establishments, from which a daily pittance of food to prisoners is served, many doubtless would constantly thus perish; and under the persecution only, it might be, of an unprincipled enemy.

A glimpse at a still more abhorrent and tremendous evil was caught, in the same vicinity, while crossing the end of a street appropriated to newly arrived and unsold slaves. It is here the emaciated and halfstarved cargoes are deposited from the stifling holds of the slave-ships, and daily exposed to brutal examination till a purchaser is found. The sight is such, to an unaccustomed eye, as unavoidably to sicken the heart and unnerve the soul; and hitherto, at the strong solicitation of others, I have avoided it.

The number of slaves brought into this port has, for the last ten years, amounted to more than twenty thousand annually; and this year it is probable there will be three times that number, for no less than thirteen thousand have already been entered since the first of January. Ships are daily arriving, crowded with them; and almost at any time, gangs just landed and nearly naked, may,

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GENERAL ASPECT

with their drivers, be seen in one part or another of the city.

The streets of Rio are in general narrow and regular, notwithstanding the hills jutting in at the sides and rising from its centre. These, indeed, are highly ornamental, and having their abrupt acclivities in most places covered thickly with the verdure of trees, creepers, and rich parasitical plants, they rise upon the eye from various points of view, both in the streets and habitations, in near and refreshing beauty.

The city contains a population of 200,000, and is an active and business-like place, resounding with the hum of varied mechanical industry; while in its numerous shops are exposed all the luxuries produced by foreign arts and manufacture. Still, to one accustomed to the general elegance, neatness, and purity of such cities as Boston and New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, and a hundred others in our own happy land, and to the intelligence, competency, and respectability exhibited by the various classes seen in their streets, Rio, with all the magnificence of its scenery, the superior advantages of its location, the beauty of much of its architecture, and the wealth of many of its inhabitants, is a most disgusting place: more so, in most of its streets, than even the lowest haunts of poverty and vice in New York or Philadelphia.

Nothing contributes more to the offensiveness of a first impression, than the large proportion which the half naked negroes and mongrels of every tint and degree of blood, make of the persons seen in the

streets. The slaves in general, though often tugging at burdens on cars and low trucks, in sweat and dust, till every muscle is strained to the utmost, are said to be more kindly treated than in most slave-holding countries. The Catholic religion affords them the relief of great numbers of holidays, besides Sunday; and they seem contented, if not happy. Those engaged in light employments, such as vending various articles of merchandize and trade, which they bear along the streets in trays and baskets upon their heads, and those keeping the stalls in the marketplaces, are often seen in groupes singing merrily, and dancing for the amusement of the crowds around. Still, in view of the nature of their condition, their number to the eye of the stranger is fearfully great; and were I an inhabitant of the city, there would be times at least at which I should tremble in the fear of witnessing the developement of a tragedy like that of St. Domingo.

A safeguard to such a catastrophe exists, in a degree perhaps, in the extensive amalgamation, by marriage and blood, of the white and coloured population, and in an equality allowed in many respects to the free blacks. Numbers of the soldiers are of this class, and I have met individuals of high office in the army, and others ordained to the services of the priesthood, of as jet a skin and as pure African blood as any in the country. Still there is ample room for apprehension on the point, and to dread eventually some fearful retribution at the hands of the afflicted and oppressed.

Even if spared the horrors of an insurrection of