Note 10 — INTRODUCTION.

Anchieta was not only a man of extraordinary firmness of mind and real piety, but a politician of no common cast, and his civil services to the Portuguese government were equal to those of the greatest captains, while his labours as a missionary and teacher were beyond those of any individual of whom I have ever read. His merits as a christian apostle and a man of literature, have disarmed even Mr. Southey of his usual rancour against the Roman Catholic faith. That excellent writer's book on Brazil is spoilt by intemperate language on a subject on which human feeling is least patient of direct contradiction, so that the general circulation of it is rendered impossible, and the good it might otherwise do in the country for which it is written frustrated. Oh, that Mr. Southey would remember the quotation which he himself brings forward from Jeremy Taylor! "Zeal against an error is not always the best instrument to find out truth."