combined superiority of character, talent, and education was
exerted in their behalf, and for their real good. There are many
men who are loth to sacrifice the refinements of intellect and taste,
the very barriers of society, to political changes, better in principle,
but bearing very little on themselves in immediate effect; and they
wisely prefer to be slighted and treated with hauteur in the world
by an ignorant nobility, to being invaded in their retirement by
the boisterous impertinence and coarse equality of an unruly
mob. The younger members of the present legislative party
should endeavour to outvie their noble predecessors in every
virtuous refinement, in the classic purity of their language, in the
elegance of their private pursuits, in the polish of their manners;
in the taste, though not the splendour of their entertainments,
nay even in the fashion of their dress, if they would reconcile the
nobility to a generous cause, and, by removing their present reasonable
apprehensions, avail themselves of so desirable an aid in remodelling
the government. This would be to benefit the country,
and to do more than justify themselves. The word gentleman,
however, is not understood in France or in Portugal, perhaps not
on the continent; there it implies nobility, with us it means a man
of honour and education, who, however high or low his birth may
be, dares not do that for which the vulgar stand excused; who is
admissible to all society; who can command satisfaction from, and
appeals to the first nobles of the land; not as a nobleman but a
gentleman, and always finds that noble as jealous, and as proud of
the title, as himself. This is the only sort of levelling, if it can be
called so, tolerated by thinking men; and it is to this perhaps that
the English character owes its high reputation: certain it is, that
our country owesI to it much of her real glory, for this one
feeling has created energies Unknown on the continent.
I had scarcely finished my extracts from the different despatches,
instructions, and reports, received and forwarded by the Governors
of Angola and Mozambique, when I learned that a Portuguese
schooner was on the point of sailing for Madeira, and having
safely deposited my instruments on board, with the exception of a
barometer, I hastened to devote the first day of leisure I had
enjoyed, to an excursion in the environs of the aqueduct.
On the right of the descent to the aqueduct are large fragments
and rocks, presenting all the characters of transition limestone;
here crystalline, there compact, equally variable in fracture ; and
the outer surface, exposed to the air for ages, passing through
all the different shades from red to black, and yielding with
difficulty to the hammer, which exposed the buff and white colours
pervading the interior of the mass. This fresh surface, where the
recent fall of vast blocks exposed it in considerable patches, formed
a pleasing contrast to the gloomy appearance which the moisture
of the atmosphere had induced over the rest. But few plants had
withstood the unusual dryness of the last summer; even the clefts
of the rocks were almost destitute of them; and I was much
disappointed in my search for lichens and mosses, of which I
promised myself a rich harvest. To give some idea, however,
of the social plants which characterized the vegetation, I gathered
the dchorium intybus and the anagallis arvensis, as I descended
to the small river, which, during thè rainy season, flows under
the great arch of the aqueduct; and pursuing its bed for a short
distance, I found the veronica beccabunga, close to a dirty stream
and several tufts of the solamm pubescem.
Ascending from the little river by the garden of orange-trees,
and turning round to look to the eastward, or towards the city,
we are struck with the regularly-stratified appearance of the
lower range of the dingy limestone of the opposite side ; looking
in many places like the coarse masonry of avast fortress, while
the higher range, defaced as it-were1 by the labours of the quarry-
men, seems hewn into rude buttresses, and has lost all traces