and in this easy and commodious style of travelling, we proceeded.  On approaching the settlement, a fierce dispute arose between the friends; of which, by each tearing me from the other, I was evidently the object; and I am quite sure that I should have been torn to pieces between them, but for the timely approach of a person who issued from a lofty and handsome edifice on the road side, attended by a train of preacher-monkeys, of which he was the chief.  He was quite a superior looking being to either of my first acquaintance, who cowered and shrunk beneath his eagle look.  They seemed humbly to lay their cases before him; when, after looking contemptuously on both, he took me to himself, caressed me, and giving me to an attendant, said—­“This bird belongs to neither, it is the property of mother church:”  and the property of mother church I remained for some years.  Of my two friends of the palm-tree, one, the preacher-monkey, turned out to be a poor Irish lay brother, of the convent of which my new master (an Irishman too) was the superior.  My yellow parrot was a Scotch adventurer, who came out to give lectures on poleetical economy to the Brazilians:  and who, finding that they had no taste for moral science, had become a servant of all-work to the brotherhood.  My dwelling was a missionary house of the Propaganda, established for the purpose of converting (i.e. burning) the poor Indians.  The Superior, Father Flynn, had recently arrived from Lisbon with unlimited powers.  He was clever, eloquent, witty, and humorous; but panting for a bishopric in his native country, he was principally employed in theological writings, which might bring him into notice and hasten his recall to Europe.

Next to the servant’s hall of a great English family, the first place in the world for completing the education of a macaw of genius, is a convent.  Its idleness and ennui render a monkey, or a parrot, a valuable resource; and between what I picked up, and what I was taught by the monks of the Propaganda, my acquirements soon became stupendous.  Always following my kind master from the refectory to the church, assisting at mess or at mass, being near him in the seclusion of the oratory, and in the festivities, he frequently held with his more confidential friends; I had loaded my astonishing memory with scraps of theology and of fun.  I could sing a French drinking song, taught me by the sub-prior Frere Jacques, and intonate a “Gloria in Excelsis” with a true nasal twang.  I had actually learned the Creed in English;[3] and could call all the brothers by their name.  I had even learned the Savoyard’s dance from my friend Frere Jacques, and sung “Gai Coco” at the same time, like Scaliger’s parrot, from whose history Frere Jacques took the idea of teaching me.  I did this, it must be acknowledged, with great awkwardness, turning in my toes, and often tumbling backwards in a clumsy and ludicrous way.  But this amused my religious friends more than all the