Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/205

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BENEVOLENT ESTABLISHMENTS.
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which unfortunately intervenes. On this head, an eloquent Peruvian writer, Father Torrejon, has observed: "They spring up as near to the sun which illumines, as they are remote from the one which commands; and the distance either denies them its influence, or it is weakened by the obliquity of the rays. It is for this reason that many plants, which, if favoured by a greater proximity, would be as loftily elevated, as majestically crowned, are now condemned to wither and decay."

We forbear to record the very flattering encomiums which foreign writers have bestowed on the academy of St. Mark, and on the genius of the natives of Peru. Laying aside, therefore, every spirit of party and of national pride, we shall conclude with the words of Fadrique Turio Ceriol, in his work on the education of a prince: "Each country has its virtues and its vices. It has its good and bad men; its learned and unlearned; its acute and torpid; its skilful and unskilful; its loyal and disloyal."

BENEVOLENT ESTABLISHMENTS.

On tracing the moral system of Peru, down to the epoch of the conquest, it will be found that those who made the earliest settlements, amid the horrors of war, the attractions of riches, and the bad example of a few dissolute adventurers by


    the country where they know it is to be had, applying it to their own purposes, even when the proprietors are present, and still more so when at the great distance of the Indies. The manuscripts are thrown aside as waste paper, and the wretched authors consigned to oblivion."

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