And should this simple fact come as a surprise to any
reader, let him not be unduly overwhelmed, for he errs
in distinguished company. Thus, Gustave Le Bon,--
he of crowd-psychology fame, speaks of South America
in his Lois psychologiques des peuples (p. 131, 12th
ed., 1916) as being predominantly of Spanish origin,
divided into numerous republics, of which the Brazilian
is one. As late as 1899, Vacher de Lapouge, in his
book on L'Aryen could describe Brazil as a "vast negro
state returning to a state of savagery," important, like
Mexico, only in a numerical way. ^* A small return, it
seems, for Brazil's intellectual adherence to France, yet
indicative of inexcusable ignorance not only of Brazil,
but of Mexico, where the cultural life, though concen-
trated, is intense and productive of results that would
repay examination. By 1899 Brazil had already pro-
duced a fairly respectable array of original creative
writers, while Mexican poetry was adding to the wealth
of new Spanish verse. Where specialists stray, then,
who shall guide the innocent layman? Nor are the
Brazilians without their case against the English, as we
shall presently note in the discussion of a mooted sec-
tion of Buckle's History of Civilization in England,
though they owe to more than one earlier English-
man a history of their land. Robert Southey, for not-
able example, after the collapse of the "pantisocratic"
plans harboured by him and Coleridge, found the time to
write a History of Brazil that is read today only some-
what less frequently than his poetry.

-x-