We have determined to have a ball on board, the day after to-morrow, that the people may get acquainted with us,—and then if any thing occurs to render it advisable to take refuge with us, they will know who they are to come amongst.
14th.—The shops are open, and business going on as usual to-day. The Prince is granting discharges to both officers and men of the Portuguese regiments, who wish to remain in Brazil instead of returning to Europe. This is stigmatised by the Portuguese as licensing desertion, from the army of the King and Cortes; whatever they may call it, I am convinced that the measure tends to the present tranquillity of the capital. The Princess and children are gone to Santa Cruz, a country estate, formerly belonging to the Jesuits, now to the crown, fourteen leagues on the road towards St. Paul's.[89]
15th.—Our ball went off very well: we had more foreigners than English; and as there was excellent music from the opera-orchestra, and a great deal of dancing, the young people enjoyed it much. I should have done so also, but that Captain Graham was suffering with the gout so severely, that I could have wished to put off the dance. I had commissioned the Viscondeça do Rio Seco and some other ladies to bring their Portuguese friends, which they did, and we had a number of pretty and agreeable women, and several gentlemanlike men, in addition to our English friends.
A dance on ship-board is always agreeable and picturesque: there is something in the very contrast afforded by the furniture of the deck of a ship of war to the company and occupation of a ball that is striking.
"The little warlike world within,
The well-reeved guns and netted canopy,"
all dressed with evergreens and flowers, waving over the heads of gay girls and their smiling partners, furnish forth combinations in which poetry and romance delight, and which one must be stoical indeed to contemplate without emotion. I never loved dancing myself, perhaps because I never excelled in it; but yet, a ball-room is to me a delightful place. There are happy faces, and hearts not the less happy for the little anxious palpitations that arise now and then, and curiosity, and hope, and all the amiable feelings of youth and nature; and if among it a little elderly gaiety mingles, and excites a smile, I, for my part, rather reverence the youth of heart which lives through the cares and vexations of this life, and can mingle in, without disturbing, the hilarity of youth.
17th.—Nothing remarkable yesterday or to-day, but the perfect quiet of the town. The Prince goes on discharging the soldiers.
19th.—This day the new ministers arrived from St. Paul's; the chief of whom in station, as in talent, is Jose Bonifacio de Andrada e Silva. According to the opinion entertained of him by the people here, I should say that Cowper had described him, when he wrote
Great offices will have
Great talents. And God gives to every man
The virtue, temper, understanding, taste,
That lift him into life, and lets him fall
Just in the niche he was ordained to fill.
To the deliverer of an injured land
He gives a tongue to enlarge upon, a heart
To feel, and courage to redress her wrongs.
He had been sent early from Brazil to study at Coimbra, where he lay sick at the time of the King's departure from Lisbon; and afterwards, during the time of the French, he could not find means to return to his native country; but upon the first rising of the people in the districts round Oporto and Coimbra, he put himself at the head of the students of the university, in their successful resistance to Junot, and afterwards served in the campaign against Soult. When he returned to Lisbon, I believe, he there entered the regular army; for after bearing arms against Massena, I find that at the end of the war he had the rank of lieutenant-colonel, with which he returned to Brazil in 1819. But his whole time in Europe was not spent in warfare: he had travelled, and had become acquainted with several among the most distinguished characters in England, France, and Italy, and had contracted a particular esteem for Alfieri. The object of his travels was rather to see and learn what might be useful to his own country, than the mere pleasure of visiting different parts of the world; and I am told, that he has particularly attended to those branches of science which may improve the agriculture and the mining of Brazil.