Beyond these occasional parties, there seems very little society during the winter, the native ladies seldom either walking or riding, and there being no places of secular amusement.  In summer, it is said, when the principal families resort to their vineyards at Pico, formalities are laid aside, and a simpler intercourse takes place.  But I never saw any existence more thoroughly pitiable than that of the young men of the higher classes; they had literally nothing to do, except to dress themselves elegantly and lounge all day in an apothecary’s shop.  A very few went out shooting or fishing occasionally; but anything like employment, even mercantile, was entirely beneath their caste; and they only pardoned the constant industry of the American Consul and his family, as a sort of national eccentricity, for which they must not be severely condemned.

A good school-system is being introduced into all the Portuguese dominions, but there is no book-store in Fayal, though some dry-goods dealers sell a few religious books.  We heard a rumor of a Portuguese “Uncle Tom” also, but I never could find the copy.  The old Convent Libraries were sent to Lisbon, on the suppression of the monasteries, and never returned.  There was once a printing-press on the island, but one of the Governors shipped it off to St. Michael.  “There it goes,” he said to the American Consul, “and the Devil take it!” The vessel was wrecked in the bay.  “You see,” he afterwards piously added, “the Devil has taken it.”  It is proper, however, to mention, that a press and a newspaper have been established since our visit, without further Satanic interference.

Books were scarce on the island.  One official gentleman from Lisbon, quite an accomplished man, who spoke French fluently and English tolerably, had some five hundred books, chiefly in the former tongue, including seventy-two volumes of Balzac.  His daughter, a young lady of fifteen, more accomplished than most of the belles of the island, showed me her little library of books in French and Portuguese, including three English volumes, an odd selection,—­“The Vicar of Wakefield,” Gregory’s “Legacy to his Daughters,” and Fielding’s “Life of Jonathan Wild.”  But, indeed, her supply of modern Portuguese literature was almost as scanty, (there is so very little of it,) and we heard of a gentleman’s studying French “in order to have something to read,” which seemed the last stage in national decay.

Perhaps we were still more startled by the unexpected literary criticisms of a young lady from St. Michael, English on the father’s side, but still Roman Catholic, who had just read the New Testament, and thus naively gave it her indorsement in a letter to an American friend:—­“I dare say you have read the New Testament; but if you have not, I recommend it to you.  I have just finished reading it, and find it a very moral and nice book.”  After this certificate, it will be safe for the Bible Society to continue its operations.