The great desire of the inhabitants seems to be to give a European air to the city. This has already been accomplished to a great extent, partly from the influx of Europeans themselves, and partly by those Brazilians who have visited Europe, either for their education or otherwise. It is but seldom now that those extraordinary dresses, both of ladies and gentlemen, which we see represented in the publications of those travellers who visited Rio, even in the early part of the present century, are to be seen in the streets. A few old women only, and those mostly coloured, are observed wearing the comb and mantilla; and the cocked hat and gold buckles are also all but extinct. Now, both ladies and gentlemen dress in the height of Parisian fashion, and both are exceedingly fond of wearing jewellery. One of the finest streets in the city is the Rua d’Ouvidor, not because it is broader, cleaner, or better paved than the others, but because the shops in it are principally occupied by French milliners, jewellers, tailors, booksellers, confectioners, shoe-makers, and barbers. These shops are fitted up with an elegance which the stranger is quite unprepared to meet. Many of them are furnished with windows formed of large panes of plate glass, similar to those which are now so common in every large town in Great Britain. Indeed, it is the Regent Street of Rio, and in it almost any European luxury can be obtained. A few years ago omnibusses were started to run from the city to the different suburbs. Small steamers ply regularly between Rio and the city of Nitherohy on the opposite side of the bay, and one runs daily to Piedade at the head of it. There is a yearly exhibition of the fine arts, in which are exposed many tolerable pictures, both by native and foreign artists. Music is very much cultivated, and the piano, which at the time when Spix and Martius visited Rio, in 1817, was only to be met with in the richest houses, has now become almost universal. The guitar was formerly the favourite instrument, as it still is all over the interior. There are excellent schools for the education of boys; and boarding schools have been established for young ladies, which are conducted on the same principles as those of a similar nature in England. Being the capital of the empire, and there being residents at the court from most of the European nations, Rio is the scene of much greater gaiety than is generally supposed by those who have never visited it. But as all these matters have been more learnedly “discoursed of” than I profess to be able to do, I shall pass over in silence the levees, the opera, the theatres, whether French or Portuguese, and the balls, public as well as private, which engross quite as much of the attention of the fashionable world here as elsewhere.