Whatever he may think of the true state of religious feeling, it soon becomes obvious to a stranger that great care is taken to celebrate the numerous festivals of the Church with all possible pomp and splendour.  One day I happened to encounter a procession in honour of St. Januarius, the patron saint of Rio.  The number of ecclesiastics taking a part amounted to several hundreds, and a body of military brought up the rear.  The streets and windows were crowded with people in their holiday costume, bands of music were playing, bells were ringing, flowers were scattered about and showered down from the houses.  The profusion of tinsel and embroidery was very great, and the balconies and windows in the line of procession were hung with rich brocade in all the colours of the rainbow.

Brazilian character.

A short stay, such as ours, afforded very limited opportunities of judging of the national character; and my impressions on this point were, probably, often erroneous.  The Brazilians and English did not then reciprocate very cordially, on account of the existing state of international relations.  Of late years great advances appear to have been made upon the mother-country, judging from the increasing liberality of their institutions, the establishment of commercial relations abroad, the freedom of discussion and influence of the press, the attention paid to public education (especially of the middle classes) the support granted to literature and science, and the declining influence of the priesthood in secular matters.  The national character, however, can scarcely be considered as fully formed; the Brazilians have been too recently emancipated from the thraldom of a modified despotism to have made, as yet, any very great progress in developing the elements of national prosperity and greatness which the vast empire of Brazil so abundantly possesses, and the foul blot of slavery, with its debasing influence, still remains untouched.

Cross the south Atlantic.

On February 2nd we sailed from Rio for the Cape of Good Hope.  The morning being calm, we were towed out by the boats of the squadron until a light air, the precursor of the seabreeze, set in.  While hove-to outside the entrance, a haul of the dredge brought up the rare Terebratula rosea, and a small shell of a new genus, allied to Rissoa.  The remainder of the day and part of the succeeding one were spent in a fruitless search for a shoal said to exist in the neighbourhood, to which Captain Stanley’s attention had been drawn by Captain Broughton, of H.M.S.  Curacao.