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AMERICAN ABSTEMIOUSNESS.

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which was, it may be said,

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We must, however, do the Americans the justice to say, that while they imitated the comfortable habits of John Bull, they avoided his dissipation. Sometimes, indeed, when brought into contact with him, at a dinner party, they considered it an indispensable part of good breeding to get "half seas over: nay, so essential did they think it to John Bull's happiness to have plenty of wine, that when they invited him to their houses, we have seen many of them, who were never known to drink on ordinary occasions anything but water, take wine, as a testimony of their hospitality, till they were obliged to leave the table under the guidance of their servants.

The South Americans, especially the better classes of them, are essentially an abstemious people, and if they do occasionally exceed in their eating, before the irresistible influence of a good asado, an olla podrida, or a rich fricassee, they are content, as far as their libations go, to moisten their repast with two or three glasses of wine. They never, when among themselves, sit over their wine, as we delight to do, after dinner. They prefer the en

70 PLEASURE OF DWELLING IN LARGE CITIES.

joyment of their siesta. Then in the cool of the evening, they drink lemonade, or eau sucré, smoke segars, and never even dream of brandy and water.

The most delightful sensation which we experienced on getting into Buenos Ayres, after our exile in the countries of Paraguay and Corrientes, was, that we had ceased to be observed or marked men. We do not say in a social point of view, for in all places we were known in this respect. We speak in a political point of view. In the interior, we were constrained to use every sort of minute and disagreeable caution in this latter respect, in order to avoid suspicion. We had the happy feeling, when we returned to Buenos Ayres, of being "nobody" there. The very reverse in this country we know to be the case. Το be nobody in politics here, is death, mortification, and daily disappointment to thousands. To be a diplomatic nonentity in Buenos Ayres, after having been of a marked political importance, and though not suspected, yet always watched, in Paraguay and Corrientes, was as life from death. In the latter places every body was peeping into our actions, and taking notes of our conduct; in the former no one cared a maravedì what our conduct

ADVANTAGES OF SOCIETY ON A LARGE SCALE. 71

was.

The transition was not only emancipation, it was unbounded liberty. We began to breathe as we rode through the long streets inhabited by a hundred thousand people; crowded with our own countrymen, saw English epaulettes and a cocked hat upon the captain of a British man-of-war; and espied at a corner some specially awkward horsemen in the shape of his lieutenants and midshipmen.

Then we could put to sea when we pleased; have as much finery as we liked in our house, without either the fear of an Artigueño's eye, or the dread of his sabre. There was no Francia there; and we once more sat down to good cheer among our own countrymen, in our own way.

Every one knows the minutely kind inspections, the charitable remarks, and the shrewd guesses, which occupy the listless inhabitants of a rural town in England, with reference to any stranger, who, without some particular rank, honourable profession, or known fortune, dares to intrude upon their society. Still, there is, there can be, under our constitution, no political fears on the part of such an intruder. But even under this mitigated view of the case, let him emerge from such a society into that of London, (where the greatest delight of all

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MISERY OF IT ON A SMALL SCALE.

delights is that of sinking into whatever obscurity you please,) and see what a night-mare oppression will be lifted from his troubled breast. The first calculation which of a morning you make in a petty town, is what you must do to go decorously, and without being scandalized, through the work of the day; the last thing you ever think of is this, in a large one. Give us London or Paris, in the old world, and Buenos Ayres, Lima, or Mexico in the new, in which to refrigerate our over-heated spirits, after the hot vapour-bath, especially in troublous times, of inland society.

Your's &c.

THE AUTHORS.

LETTER XXVIII.

THE AUTHORS TO GENERAL MILLER.

Historical and Political Events, rapidly given, according to our original Plan-Buenos Ayres, the Matrix of the South American Revolution-Important Results of the Independence of South America-Field Marshal Beresford's and Col. Pack's Escape-El Señor Doctor Don Mariano de Moreno-The Viceroy Cisneros -The Revolution-Deposition of the Viceroy Sobremonte Alzaga and Elio-The Accession of Cisneros-Doña Carlota de Bourbon.

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London, 1842.

WE have lingered so long over South American scenes and personal adventure, that our readers, by this time, will have begun to suppose they are to look for nothing of either a political or historical nature in our present volumes. They will fancy that, bound by the spell of early reminiscence, (that is now the fashionable word,) and by the charm which surrounds the record of desultory wanderings, we are confined within the magic circle of

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personal narrative," and can by no means move in a wider sphere.

But although there is, undoubtedly, a fascination in the record of early travel and adventure, and although the writer may indulge the hope

VOL. II.

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