I have also walked a great deal about the town, and have again visited the arsenals; in which very great improvements have been made and are making, particularly building sheds for the workmen. After an English arsenal, to be sure, the want of machinery and all the luxuries of labour is conspicuous; but the work is well done, and reminds me of that I used to see under the old Parsee builder in Bombay. They are laying down new ships and repairing old ones. I only wish they could form a nursery for seamen, because Brazil must have ships to guard her coasts. Fisheries off the Abrolhos, and from St. Catherine's, might perhaps do something towards it. From the arsenal I climbed the hill immediately overlooking it, where there is the convent of San Bento; where, it is said, there is a good library, but it is not accessible to women. The situation of the convent is delightful, overlooking both divisions of the harbour and the whole town, and the hills many a mile beyond. I am not sure whether a cloister or a prison, commanding a fine view, be preferable to one without. Whether the gazing on a beautiful scene be in itself a pleasure great enough to alleviate confinement; or whether it does not increase the longing for liberty in a way analogous to that in which a well-remembered air creates a longing, even to death, for the home where that air was first heard;--it seems to me as if, once imprisoned, I would break every association with liberty, and keep my eyes from wandering where my limbs must no longer bear me. However, I do suppose some may be, and some have been, happy in a cloister. I cannot envy them; I would fain not despise them. _September 19th_.--Our little English world at Rio is grieving in one common mourning for the death of one of the youngest, and certainly the loveliest, of our countrywomen here. Beautiful and gay, and the lately married and cherished wife of a most worthy man, Mrs. N. died a short time after the birth of her first child. She had appeared to be recovering well; she relapsed and died. It is one of those events that excites sympathy in the hardest, and commiseration in the coldest.