The Mercantile Gazette, edited by Mr. Hallet, a North-American gentleman, is very useful; it has every sort of commercial information. A newspaper of the same description, the Diario, carried on by a Portuguese, failed for want of requisite attention.
A number of ephemeral productions appear from time to time, “to fret and strut their hour upon the stage, and then are heard no more.”
In the almanack of 1824, there is a selection of English puns and Joe Miller’s jests, to amuse the Buenos Ayreans, and give them a specimen of English low wit.
The PRINTING-OFFICES are spacious, and furnished with every requisite, from London. An English printer, Mr. Cook, is employed in one of the offices, and report states his professional talents to be of the first order.
Religion.—Previous to the late treaty with Great Britain, no other place of public worship was allowed in Buenos Ayres, except those of the Romish church; and it was only after much discussion, that the article allowing religious toleration was obtained.
The Catholic faith has been denominated a religion of the fancy; the Protestant, one of the mind. A book I have lately read, Blunt’s Italy, ingeniously endeavours to prove that most of the Catholic ceremonies are remnants of Paganism; and the author illustrates his arguments by comparing the Roman with the Popish festivals. The great similarity would certainly incline one to give credence to the assertion. The reformed church, however, has its incongruities likewise. In Buenos Ayres I have not witnessed any thing like the superstition that reigns in Belgium; bigots there are, but not more than in some of our sects at home. The rising generation of Buenos Ayres have gone from one extreme to another, and are quite Voltairians: at the theatre, during a portrait exhibition of different public characters, that of Voltaire ran away with all the applause.
In January, 1824, an archbishop, named Don Juan Muzi, arrived from Rome with a large suite, in a Sardinian brig, which hoisted the Papal flag in addition to her own, and fired a salute. Some time ago, such an event would have put the whole town in commotion; as it was, few attended to see him land, and his reception by the government was any thing but cordial: he shortly after departed for Chili. During his abode, he lodged at Faunch’s Hotel, and there gave his benedictions to the crowds that visited him, who were mostly females, attracted, I thought, more from curiosity than from any other motive. The manifest of the archbishop’s effects raised a smile:—there were beads, crosses, and every trifling appendage of the church. The archbishop himself, from his venerable aspect and mild manners, engaged the esteem of all; but the Papal power is on the wane here now, whatever it might have been in other times. The Catholic church, however, under the care of a liberal priesthood, and shorn of its superstitions, will insure the respect of all countries.