locks, and old gentlemen with stars and orders; there were judges, priests, and barons. What more could be wanted to make a ball all that a ball should be?

The hair of the younger ladies was turned up behind, and fell in front in large and luxuriant ringlets. So far they resembled my countrywomen; but their complexions and cast of features were very different. "Pretty girls," lighthaired, fair, airy beings, such as England is so abundantly blessed with, there were none; but the proportion of really handsome women was great.

Some would have made pictures: their hair black, glossy, and luxuriant; their eyes full, dark, and " unfathomable," (altogether different from the black sparkling eye, which seems to reflect at once the light which falls upon it). They had fine teeth, which their full lips easily disclosed, and were generally of middle height, well-proportioned, and rather tending to embonpoint. I saw none of those very small waists which so many English women attain to, by great endurance and much patient suffering.

The ladies were lively, talkative, and goodtempered, with intelligent foreheads. They kissed acquaintances of their own sex, on recognising

28

FANS AND GOSSIP.

them, and used the fan like the Spaniards; keeping it in incessant motion, opening and shutting it, and turning it in a thousand different ways, so easily, and, as it seemed, unconsciously, with such a concealment of their art, as was most graceful. Many of the younger ones had learned English, and spoke it fluently. Their pronunciation was remarkably good; and there are few pleasanter things among strangers in a strange country, than to hear one's own tongue spoken by women without hesitation, and with only that slight difference in accent and in idiom, which gives a freshness even to gossip and tittle-tattle.

There were the usual proportion of ladies past their prime, with turbans, birds of Paradise, and shining silks, and a due sprinkling of conspicuous looking young men, who had happily not attained that age when "man suspects himself a fool." One custom differed from ours, and showed much kindness of feeling. A group of women servants with their heads covered with white kerchiefs were lying upon a part of the staircase, from which they could look at the dancers over the heads of those who stood at the door, and thus they shared in the pleasures of the family.

CHAPTER III.

I stole all courtesy from heaven.

HENRY IV. Pt. 1. Act. iii. Sc. 2.

Ponta Delgada.-Elections.-Streets.-Shops.-Carriages.

Fountains.-Politics.-Carapuças.-General Politeness.

DECEMBER 9, SUNDAY.-A pleasant June day, with a mild breeze from the S. W., and a cloudy but not a thick sky. Went to the Protestant Episcopal chapel, a neat, plain building, standing in a garden-like burying-place, planted with evergreens. The Reverend Mr. Brandt read the service, and preached a sermon to "two or three who were gathered together." There are said to be as many as from one to two hundred English in Ponta Delgada; -- there were twelve people in the church.

This is the market-day here, and more business seems to be going on among the tradespeople than

on any other day of the week; in short, there is as little appearance of religion, as in a Protestant country on week days, or as in Hyde Park or the Zoological gardens on fine Sunday afternoons. All the market-people, however, attend mass either before or after they sell their goods.

Went into one of the Catholic churches, where was a crowd of men, with no particular look of devotion in their faces. We soon perceived that the elections were going on, of "select men," who are to choose members for the Cortes. The scriveners and vote-takers were sitting in the middle of the church, round a table covered with scarlet cloth. There were priests quietly and narrowly watching all that went forward, and a small crowd of bystanders looking over the shoulders of those who sat at the table. The priests sit here officially. They are supposed to know every individual in their parish, and therefore to be able to detect personations - a deception very likely to be practised, where the suffrage is, what is called, universal.

In the corner of the church an aged man was burning the old ballot-papers, by applying a candle to a heap that lay on the stone floor, and when they were burned he quenched the sparks

with a few handfuls of holy water from the marble basin.

December 10.-The streets of Ponta Delgada are narrow, and the houses lofty. They are lighted with oil-lamps, pitched with a rough honey-combed stone, and here and there, before the better sort of houses, there is a narrow pavement. In other respects they much resemble some of the narrow streets in Paris, having a scanty stone pavement in the centre of the street, which, in wet weather, acts as a gutter, and in dry is chosen by a single ass, and his barefooted driver, who runs and vociferates behind him.

The basement of the houses is used for shops, storehouses, or stables. The shops are lighted from the door, and have no windows. There is consequently none of the gay variety of shopfronts seen in England, but open doors display counters and shelves of wares inside. The signs for the different trades are hung out of these doorways. At one door, for instance, you see a dozen strips of printed cottons tied to a small stick, and fluttering like the ribbons on a recruiting sergeant's hat. This tells you that a linendraper stands ready inside with tape and cottons.