MANSFIELD'S BRAZIL AND PARAGUAY..

ThE late Charles Mansfield was, according to present proofs, one of those men who impressed his friends with a higher sense of his genius than what he did will confirm to the world at large. In a very graceful and touching notice of his departed friend by Mr. Kingsley, hope and admiration are stamped on every line. When we test this admiration by reference to the Letters from Brazil and Paraguay, fresh, lively, and observing as they are, the author hardly sustains the reputation assigned him by the critic. When we rut the two together, we seem to perceive the grounds of the partiality. Charles Mansfield's personal manners and cha- racter appear to have been simple and winning. His natural sense of humanity had been stimulated to activity by his remem- brance of the fagging system of Winchester, which also roused a feeling against authority. Like many other thoughtful minds, he was long shaken by doubts of a doctrinal kind ; but the doubts were eventually resolved. His acquirements were considerable, his pursuits various ; but it strikes us, that though his start was vigorous, his energy relaxed as the chase continued, and that he was apt to abandon it as the end approached. His biographer hints at this defect ; it is glaringly visible in his travels. He had reached Paraguay through difficulties ; for although Lopez the Dictator of 1852-'53 was not so bad as Francia, still he had a touch both of tyrant and exclusionist. Yet when Mansfield had an opportunity of exploring the country under the ruler's pa- tronage, he thus, as he records in his journal, threw up the under- taking. "January 22d.—A man brought me a horse which he offered to sell for ten dollars : I liked his looks so much that I told him to leave it for me to try : after dinner I started (at two p. m.) on the charming little animal, and rode out to Campo Grande, where I spent a very pleasant afternoon, and left at eight. During my ride back, I came to the determination not to buy the horse, but to go down the river by the first ship and return straight home to England."

Whether time might have steadied his resolves, and he might have reached eminence, as Mr. Kingsley thinks, in chemistry, to which he was devoting himself; and respecting an item of which (the constitution of salts) he has left a manuscript work, it is impossible to tell. He was cut off prematurely at thirty-eight, under circumstances which naturally consecrated his memory in the minds of his friends.

" In February 1855, he was at work on some experiments connected with his patent, in a room which he had fitted up near the Regent's Canal. By a mistake of the lad who assisted him, the apparatus got out of order ' • the naphtha boiled over, and was already on fire. To save the premises from the effects of an explosion, Mr. Mansfield caught up the still in his arms and attempted to carry it out ; the door was fast ; he tried to hurl it through the window, but too late. The still dropped from his hands, half flayed with liquid fire. He scrambled out, rolled in the snow, and so extinguished the flame. Fearfully, burnt, bruised moreover about the head whilst escap- ing, he had yet to walk nearly a mile, leaning upon a :woman's arm, to reach a cab, and was taken to the Middlesex Hospital ; where, after nine days of fearful agony, he died like a Christian man."

Charles Mansfield's Letters, descriptive of a voyage to Bra- zil, rambles about that country, an ascent of the La Plata to Corrientes, and a subsequent land-journey to Assumption, the capital of Paraguay, are characterized by spirit and fresh- ness. These qualities are unable to sustain the reader's interest to the end, less for want of finish or completion, as Mr. Kingsley anticipated would be the case, than for want of substance. The frequent detail of personal occurrences, though proper topics in friendly, letters, want interest for the printed book. The descrip- tions of scenery, rich as they frequently are, pall by recur- rence. As no very definite purpose seemed to prompt the traveller's course, there is an uncertainty in his move- ments, which his own written account might have removed, though simple continuity of narrative would not. A defi- nite purpose in a traveller is much more advantageous than mere literary form; produces matter, it gives rise to ad- venture. As Mr. -allace has remarked, these half-settled Tro- pical countries do not furnish incidents or materials to equal ex- pectation. The cleared places are rough ; you " cannot see the wood for the trees," or the trees for the wood. The rarer birds, the larger animals, the more dangerous reptiles, are seldom met with even by those who seek them. The search of the naturalist some- times finds them and turns up adventures in the seeking. Mr. Mansfield's excursions were without definite end except the last, whose mode of termination we have seen. From Pernambuco and Rio he made various trips into the interior in company with friends he had acquired on his voyage or during his sojourn, but with little object beyond seeing the country, and mostly re- strained by the business of his companions. -He visited Buenos Ayres and Monte o= leo, ascended the La Plata in a sailing= vessel to Corrienteb , the monotony of the voyage being seldom relieved by land-excursions, and never to any extent. At Cor-

rientes he resided some i time, waiting for permission to enter Paraguay, observing what fell n his way, but rather for amuse- ment than with scientific purpose. The return voyage from As- sumption differed little from the ascending, except in the advan- tage of having the current in your favour. The most informing passages relate to the present social state of Paraguay, so superior m its order to the anarchy of the other parts of the Argentine Republic. The order, however, is that of an absolute despotism reducing men to the condition Of children.

The earlier letters, dealing with such well-worn subjects as a • Paraguay, Brazil, and the Plate : Letters tcritten in 1852-'53. By C. B. Hans. field, Kw., 3rd., of Clare Hall, Cambridge,: with a Sketch of the Author's Life, by the Bee. Charles Kingsley jun. With a Map, Portrait, and Illustrations. Pub- lished by Macmillan, Cambridge.

steam sea-voyage have more interest than the fresher field of South America. This may arise from the want of practical pur- suit already noted, or from some deficiency of grasp and compre- hensiveness. The outward voyage has greater completeness ; as if shutting in the writer to the vessel and its daily doings gave him a mastery which he loses in a larger sphere. The extent and magnificence of the Braiilian forests, the boundless expanse of La Plata, and the wastes and wild woods on the banks of its tributaries, seem to overwhelm him by their vastness. Some of his pictures are real and fresh,—as this of the Brazilian birds, especially the humming-birds.

" The silence of the forests is most striking ; scarcely a bird is seen or heard in the math virgem. Two or three different kinds of parrots are tometimes "heard screaming as they fly across the valleys at a great height. In the more open and cultivated parts, or where the soil is covered with ca-

irn, other sorts of birds are to be seen : ands, black birds with thick deep bills and long tails, always in flocks; little black starlings, which sing very sweetly, and build bottled-shaped nests, hanging in families from some solitary tree in the valley ; lots of humming-birds. Of these I have seen three or four kinds ; the commonest one is a very little fellow, all covered with iridescent green. The flight of these little things is the most wonder- ful sight : you sometimes see one, as you think, sitting on a twig ; when you get a little nearer, you see that there is no twig—he is sitting on the air, remaining quite stationary, while his wings are vibrating like micro- scropic steam-engines ; his beak is probing some flower on a bunch. Then he gives a -little jerk with his tail, and his position is shifted half an inch to the next flower on the bunch ; there he remains again motionless for a few seconds, and then repeats his manoeuvre, or perhaps vanishes, having darted off like a streak of lightning to some other tree. Severafdifferent kinds of hawks are continually to be seen, sitting generally on the top of some dead tree-branch ; very tame, as are all the birds."

Amongst the various pursuits which Charles Mansfield took up in the course of his life, was associations to improve the condi- tion of the working classes. Some notions—they had gone no further--connected with colonization appear to have been -a motive of his voyage. He left England with the idea that it was better to cultivate our own waste lands than stimulate our labourers to emigrate. His first sight -of the rich interminable plains of South America, occupied by such a slothful race as the cross-breeds and Spanish or Portuguese Creoles, qualified his theory. He had scarcely landed at Pernambuco when he exclaims, " What a paradise is or. at least might be this country, if it were possessed by the English " Further experience confirmed and shaped his first impressions. He devotes a whole letter (chapter) to the sub- ject, in which he shows how readily an ardent mind that has thrown off the prestige of authority rapidly falls into American ideas of natural right and manifest destiny.

-" Here we are on our voyage up the mighty river, nineteen days out from Buenos. Ayres, haying been able to sail six of those days. What a country what a river! How wasted ! What business have these Spaniards and Portuguese to lay claim to these magnificent lands, which they do not oc- cupy, and never will ? * • Now the first great fact is, that here, in South America, are numberless thousands of square miles of the most splendid land in the world, for the production of every article the soil will yield to man. Here, in Brazil, and in-the provinces drained by the tributaries of the La Plata, is every variety of soil, mountain, valley, plain, and forest, claimed by a race of people who, like dogs in manger, will not cultivate themselves, and yet claim a right to prevent others from doing so." What a monstrous folly, to guarantee by treaties the possession of these lands to these Iberians. " Now one of two things will be done some day : either the industrious masses of Europe will invade these countries, and take by force what they require here for their necessities ; or these lands -must be silently conquered by the slow,and sure process of immigration, and the present owners ab- sorbed in the industrious race that will really people the country. Here is all this glorious continent, that has been begging these four hundred years to be replenished, still occupied only in spots few and far between, and these more like sore places—some skin-disease--than even rags of clothing for-the earth. Before.I came to this country, I thought much less favour- ably of emigration,- even of colonization, than I do now. What I have seen here has opened quite a new field to my view : what I held before (that it is our urgent duty to cultivate our own land to the nth degree) is all right ; but it Is not enough ; -my notions were -narrow : it seems to ni ,e now even, that I see God brmging this good-out of -the evil-of the ownership of land in England, ;that thus He is actually compelling us to go forth and replenish the earth, far and wide, instead of cramming ourselves all into our own island and making all England one great town.

" The process of absorption of the-Iberian race has given symptoms of commencement-already. There are multitudes of Irish in the Pampas, and hundreds of English in the towns, (Monte Video, Buenos Ayres, Rio de Ja- neiro, &c.,). the latter chiefly merchants. * • * '"There is already a movement hither [to Paraguay] in this direction, or rather signs of two movements, a french and an English one. The latter is in the form of some confounded speculation for the purpose of personal enrichment on therrt of some English and French merchants in the Banda Oriental and in .Comentes. The-other, the French, is the leading idea of my companion here, .M. G—, who is quite a hero in his quiet way. Be lathe beat Frenchman I ever met with, and quite different from any other I ever saw, with a_depth of seriousness and perseverance about him that must be very, rare in this country. He has very much the same notions as I have about the obvious necessity of colonizing South America ; but he -has just enough of the intense nationality of his countrymen to narrow his views, and put the problem before him in the. form of French influence to be ex- tended : but belies less of obtrusiveness in this all-for-France of his than most of his compatriots have. Ishould be -very glad to see South America colonized by France, if I thought they would do it well ; but, seeing they cannot govern their own country, I do mat think-it likely they will succeed here just yet."

long after -these speculations, and -while waiting at Assump- tion, he describes a striking incident on a visit to some casual ac-

quaintance. • " Last night I went to see the Brazilian Minister and his wife, who came up in the steamer the other day : it was most refreshing ; they are very awe:people. Both speak English nearly as well as I can, and I think Ma- dame does quite : she is a Porteria (Buenos Ayrean) by birth, her husband emerge Brazilian : she would pass for an agreeable-nice-looking person in London, and is quite young. Their tea-table, in thorough English family style, was very jolly ; it almost induced me to take a cup of strong green tea, for she had.forgotten to bring any black, and -could not get any here. I considered it a prophetic indication to hear a Frenchman who was present and this pair conversing perfectly in English, without any Englishman join- ing in the talk. So it will be everywhere in due time."

Besides an introduction, the Memoir, and the revision of the letters—to omit the more trivial matter—Mr. Kingsley has written various notes. We quote a corrective or speculative one in re- ference to his •author's theories.

" The extent of Basque emigration both from Spain and France to the shores of the Plate, and especially to Monte Video, 18 however •also a fact that should not be overlooked. Some years ago, if not to the present day, there were whole villages near Monte Video in which nothing but Basque was spoken, like Gaelic in the Highland settlements of Canada. Indeed, the heroic defence of Monte Video during its long siege is perhaps mainly to be attributed to that Basque tenacity of purpose which has maintained in our days a seven-years war' against the whole forces of Spain. " Now, inasmuch as the Basques are the genuine Iberi,—the Spaniards generally only the Gothicized or Vandalized descendants of the same race,— that race may be said to be renovating itself from its original stock, so far as Basque immigration is concerned. But thejuxtaposition of Irishman and Basque on the shores of the Plate is one of the most curious facts of contemporary history. Are we to witness, after thousands of years have elapsed, the formation of a second people of Celtiberi ' ?"