But yet, as a whole, the Peruvians, for whose manifold faults very great allowances should be made, have, in an eminent degree, the redeeming qualities of soft, attractive manners, and a mild, prepossessing address. These agreeable characteristics, not so frequently as could be wished associated with a manly openness and frankness of mind, sometimes serve, in the present evil times, as a ready cloak to exclude the ken of those whom they are willing to deceive. If these secluded people, too long accustomed to servitude and ease during the luxurious dynasty of their European masters, were once induced—which, under good moral management, they easily might be,—to make honesty and industry more prevalent virtues than they are at present among the bulk of the population, then they might realize, more largely than they have yet done, the advantages of that unsettled freedom, which, with feelings of pardonable exultation, they pride themselves in possessing; and, with such an amendment on their moral features, their richly varied country, with all its natural superiorities and improvable resources, might soon be transformed into an earthly elysium. But the germ of true political liberty must be better cultivated than it has yet been among them, and protected by a steady, disinterested, and patriotic government, before the soil can be made to throw out its latent luxuriance, or generous and noble virtues freely unfold themselves in the heads and hearts of a newly independent, uninstructed, and heterogeneous population. The common race of Spaniards from old Spain, who established themselves and reared families in Peru, appear to have been, as we formerly signified, men of strict commercial integrity, scarcely requiring written obligations or acknowledgements in their pecuniary transactions one with the other; they are reported to have been friendly and charitable, always ready to assist a poor adventurer from the old country, or a needy friend, whenever he presented himself. The houses of the affluent teemed with idle domestics and laughing loiterers, whose coarse merriment bespoke contentment and plenty; and the beggar, who sat in the back-court and corridor (the walls of which are still beautified with painted flowers and landscapes) to enjoy the cool of the artificial fountain, or who rested himself on the benches of the tesselated porchway, laughing with the merry fellows that were about him, felt not the miseries of pauperism; for, wherever the Limenian mendicant seated himself, there he was happy, and partook cheerfully of the abundant surplus from the rich man’s table, which was liberally bestowed on the poor.