Struggle for the territory of Brazil had bred a love for the soil that was bound sooner or later to become spiritualized into an aspiration toward autonomy. The _brasileiros_ were not forever to remain the _bestas_ that the hell-mouth of Bahia had called them, nor provide luxury for the _maganos de Portugal_. The history of colonial exploitation repeated itself: Spain with Spanish-America, Portugal with Brazil, England with the future United States. Taxes grew, and with them, resentment. Yet, as so often, the articulation of that rebellious spirit came not from the chief sufferers of oppression, but from an idealistic band of poets whose exact motives have not yet been thoroughly clarified by historical investigation. Few less fitted to head a separatist movement than these lyric, idealistic spirits who form part of the _Inconfidencia_ (Disloyalty) group immortalized in Brazilian history through the hanging of _Tiradentes_ and the imprisonment and exile of a number of others. These men were premature in their attempt, and foredoomed to failure, but they lived, as well as wrote, an ideal and thus form at once an epoch in the national history and the nation’s letters. The freedom won by the United States, the foreshadowing of the French revolution, inspired in them ideas of a Brazilian republic; how surely idealistic was such an aim may be realized when we recall that Brazil’s emancipation was initiated with a monarchy (1822) and that, although it has been a republic since 1889, there are a number of serious thinkers who consider the more liberal form of government still less a boon than a disadvantage. In 1783, Luis da Cunha de Menezes, a vain, pompous fellow, was named Captain-General of the Province of Minas. It was against him that were launched the nine satirical verse letters called _Cartas Chilenas_ and signed by the pseudonym _Critillo_ (1786). Menezes was succeeded by Barbacena (1788) who it was rumoured, meant to exact the payment of 700 _arrobas_ of gold, overdue from the province. It was this that proved the immediate stimulus to an only half-proved case of revolt, which, harshly suppressed, deprived Brazil of a number of its ripest talents. From the name of the province--Minas Geraes--these poets have been grouped into a so-called Mineira school, which includes the two epicists, Frei José de Santa Rita Durão and José Basilio de Gama, and the four lyrists, Claudio Manoel da Costa, Thomas Antonio Gonzaga, Ignacio José de Alvarenga Peixoto and Manoel Ignacio da Silva Alvarenga. II