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[248] can be produced only by great wealth, and great wealth has now passed to the Brazils with the chief nobility, and those who remain do not seek the pleasures of society. When Marshal Beresford is here,—which he is not now,—there is much company at his palace, but that is all; and even what is called society, in the houses of the rich merchants, is but a great dinner, with cards in the evening, to such excess and fatuity, that out of forty-five people I have counted ten tables, and of course, only five persons remained, like myself, to walk up and down among them, in wearisome listlessness. Another embarrassment to society is the distance at which people live from each other. The city extends eight miles along the river, and there is no part of it in which either the rich, the noble, or the fashionable chiefly live, or more resort, than to any other; so that any person of a particular class finds himself at a fatal distance from the rest, with whom he would naturally associate; and I, who lived near the booksellers, and the Public Library, happened, to be sure, to be near one or two persons whom I could call my friends, such as Mr. Stephens, Mr. Musgrave, etc., but was, at the same time, four miles from the two families I would gladly have visited the most frequently.

I do not mean, however, that I felt the want of society, even at Lisbon. . . . I knew a good many persons who interested me more or less; several men of letters, such as Macedo, Barbosa, Trigozo, and Andrade, with whom I was familiar; several ecclesiastics, who, by the by, are in general more cultivated than the clergy at Madrid; and several families, both foreigners and Portuguese. Among the last was Mr. Stephens, an old English gentleman, at whose table I always had a plate, and where I met generally John Bell, Mr. Musgrave, and two or three other men of letters, and M. Lesseps, the French charged d'affaires, an uncommonly interesting man from his knowledge and vivacity, and remarkable as the only individual who escaped from La Peyrouse's last fatal expedition,. . . . of which he never speaks but with very strong emotions, for he loved La Peyrouse like a father.

Two Portuguese families are to be noted. . . . . The first is the family of the Count d'alba, whose wife is sister to the famous Count Palmella,—now just going to be the chief minister at the Brazils,—and is considered the most cultivated woman in the highest class of the nobility. Like her sister, Mad. de Souza,—who gave me my letter to her,—she is rather awkward and dry in her manner; but still she is interesting, because she endeavors to be so by good sense and unpretending kindness; and if she had not lived nearly four miles off, I should have gone to see her often. For the same reason I saw


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