e Brazilian poets are Thomaz Antonio Gonzaga, Antonio Goncalves
Dias and Bernardo Guimaraes. Among the dramatists and novelists may be
mentioned Joaquim Manoel de Macedo, Jose Martiniano de Alencar, Bernardo
Guimaraes, A. de Escrangnolle Taunay and J.M. Machado de Assis. Jose M.
de Alencar is usually described as the greatest of Brazilian novelists.
The most popular of his romances are _Iracema_ and _O Guarany_. In
historical literature Brazil has produced one writer of high
standing--Francisco Adolpho Varnhagen (Visconde de Porto Seguro), whose
_Historia Geral do Brazil_ is a standard authority on that subject. The
two English authorities, Robert Southey's _History of Brazil_, covering
the colonial period, and John Armitage's _History of Brazil_, covering
the period between the arrival of the Braganza family (1808) and the
abdication of Dom Pedro I. (1831), have been translated into Portuguese.
Another Brazilian historian of recognized merit is Joao Manoel Pereira
da Silva, whose historical writings cover the first years of the empire,
from its foundation to 1840. Among the later writers Joao Capistrano de
Abren has produced some short historical studies of great merit. In the
field of philosophic speculation, Auguste Comte has had many disciples
in Brazil.

_Finance._--The national revenue is derived largely from the duties on
imports, the duties on exports having been surrendered to the states
when the republic was organized. Other sources of revenue are stamp
taxes on business transactions, domestic consumption taxes (usually
payable in stamps) on manufactured tobaccos, beverages, boots and
shoes, textiles, matches, salt, preserved foods, hats, pharmaceutical
preparations, perfumeries, candles, vinegar, walking sticks and
playing cards, and taxes on lotteries, passenger tickets, salaries and
dividends of joint-stock companies. Formerly import duties were
payable in currency, but in 1899 it was decided to collect 10% of them
in gold to provide the government with specie for its foreign
remittances. The revenues and expenditures have since then been
calculated in gold and currency together, to the complete
mystification of the average citizen, and the gold percentage of the
duties on imports has been increased to 35 and 50% (in 1907), the
higher rate to apply to specified articles and rule when exchange on
London is above 14 pence per milreis, and the lower when it is below.
The ser