1847.]

low the rise of the mountains to the west, [near fifty miles distant,] you look over the immediate summits which wall the valley, to another and more distant range-and to range beyond range, with valleys between each, until the whole melts into a vapory distance, blue as the cloudless sky above you.

"I could have gazed for hours at this little world while the sun and passing vapor chequered the fields, and sailing off again, left the whole one bright mass of verdure and water,-bringing out clearly the domes and towers of the village churches studding the plain or leaning against the first slopes of the mountains, with the huge lakes looming larger in the rarified atmosphere. Yet one thing was wanting. Over the immense expanse there seemed scarce an evidence of life. There were no figures in the picture. It lay torpid in the sun-light, like some deserted region where nature was again beginning to assert her empire-vast, solitary and melancholy. There were neither sails nor steamers on the lakes, no smoke over the vil. lages, no people at labor in the fields, no horsemen, coaches, or travellers but ourselves. The silence was almost supernatural; one expects to hear the echo of the national strife that filled these plains with discord, yet lingering among the hills. It was a picture of 'still life,' inanimate in every feature, save where, on the distant mountain sides, the fire of some poor coal-burner, mingled its blue wreath with the bluer sky, or the tinkle of the bell of a solitary muleteer was heard from among the dark and solemn pines."*

If the soil and scenery of Mexico are beautiful, society, too, is not without its interesting or excellent features. The political misfortunes and colonial misrule we have described, if naturally debased the people, but we assert, from personal observation, that there are materials in Mexico, which, properly educated and governed, would soon form the nucleus for the energizing emigration of the old world. The women of Mexico, though by no means beautiful, are always agreeable. There is a plaintive softness in their address, a charming naiveté and archness in their conversation, a kindness of heart and a genuine naturalness, that win foreigners irresistibly. The black eye and queenly step of old Spain are not wanting among these gentle children of Andalusia; and, whether at prayer in the cathedral or flirting her fan at the opera, a Mexican doña is always a lady in the genuine signification of that misused epithet. It is not our privilege to say the same of the men. Bright examples of purity, honor and virtue are found in all classes: but the mass of the male sex is selfish, false, reckless and idle. By observing the purposes of life in any country, we

Mexico as it Was and as it Is, p. 35.

But

may form very accurate ideas of national character. such an observation in Mexico discloses nothing that is lofty or even worthy in the great body of the people. Life is objectless. The Indians are effectually gleba adscripti; and their prospects of exaltation are, of course, extremely limited. The literature of the nation is almost exclusively Spanish, with the exception of a few bad translations from the trashy immoralities of the French press. The newspapers are small in size, and contain little more than the European news, accounts of the government or army, and political disputes. Ambition is therefore confined to the military class, and all avenues to success are opened by intrigue. Civilians are almost excluded from the lists of fame. The library of original Mexican authors is exceedingly small, and the reprints from standard European works is quite as limited. Churchmen, comfortable in the possession of the largest revenues in the country, do not even rouse themselves from their lethargy to let off an occasional polemical pamphlet. As no religion is permitted but the Catholic, they have no controversies. All men are Romanists by virtue of the constitution. Lawyers do not strive for mastery upon the progressive principles by which modern law is illustrated in Europe and this country, but content themselves with delving deeper and deeper for those mysterious devices of chicanery by which they defeat justice or protract payments. Men of fashion and fortune are the consummate butterflies of this solemn realm of the statu quo. They flirt a little, intrigue a little, gamble a little, fight fowls a little, and ride a little on a little horse that moves along at a little mincing pace. Such is a picture of this drowsy realm of inactivity, whose silence would be uninterrupted were it not broken by the shouts of a refreshing revolution. The drum and the bell are the hieroglyphics of Mexico. The priest and the soldier are the twin incubi oppressing the bosom of the beautiful land and crushing its vitals by the weight of mingled superstition and despotism.

When the war broke out between the United States and Mexico, we confess that we did not regard it with the horror that affected the nervous sensibilities of some of our fellowcitizens. It seemed to us that by the revolution, Mexico had been enabled to cast off a foreign despotism only to rivet on her limbs the weightier chains of domestic tyranny.

Continual seditions drove the people further and further from the true principles of self-rule, and made them dependent upon the force that would impose civil peace. We do not believe that it is the "manifest destiny of the AngloSaxon race" to infuse liberty, civilization and christianity into our neighbors by the emphatic argument of war; yet we hope that war with Mexico will produce the results of internal union, and infuse the genius of our institutions. among the people, more readily than they can ever be taught by treatises on abstract republicanism Invasions and hostilities have often been diffusive energies. The characters of nations become entangled with each other by wars, for the people necessarily mingle; and the more powerful, either absorbs the weaker or leaves its indelible impress. The war of the revolution in Mexico was more calculated to make soldiers than statesmen;-and, as Lamartine says in his remarkable narrative of the Girondists-"there are epochs in the history of the human race, when the decayed branches fall from the tree of humanity, and when institutions grown old and exhausted, sink and leave space for fresh institutions full of sap, which renew the youth and recast the models of a people. Antiquity is replete with this transformation, of which we only catch a glimpse in the relics of history. Each decadence of effete ideas carries with it an old world, and gives its name to a new order of civilization. The East, China, Egypt, Greece and Rome have seen these ruins and renewals; and the West experienced them when the Druidical authority gave way to the gods and government of the Romans."

We confess our belief that Mexico is now incapable of self-rule, and that her only hope of salvation is in the government of some wise and virtuous ruler or junta, having the power to enforce domestic tranquillity until the dawn of national resurrection from the ruins of central despotism. Santa Anna has bewildered, cheated, depraved the country for near twenty years, and anarchy has aided his diabolical scheme. Mexico must, therefore, 1st, have peace, in order to ascertain her condition and wants; 2nd, education, in order to instruct her in the means of progressive freedom; and 3rd, time and a beneficent direction of public and domestic affairs, in order that she may form a wholesome

public opinion, as contradistinguished from military and ecclesiastical opinion.

Whatever of this healthy element of national character she may have possessed in past years, quailed before the bayonet. FACTION was paramount; and, it is in this respect that we may take a useful lesson from the chapter of Mexican story. Parties and not constituences are beginning to be represented in this country, and to rule independently of the people. PARTIES have always been advocated as useful watchmen over each other, and as preventing excessive confidence in individuals; but the constitution provides the requisite checks and balances in frequent elections, in Houses of Delegates, National Houses of Representatives, Presidents and State Governments. Laws are filtered through all these popular and purifying sieves before they become binding on the people, and consequently the most jealous conservative of democratic liberty need not fear the want of sufficient vigilance. But, on the other hand, in parties, and especially in the caucuses of parties, we behold an attempt to exercise imperious despotism over the constitutional freedom of elections. Our national laws regard all who choose to place themselves before the people for office as entitled to be candidates. Yet party caucuses not only abridge but totally deny this right, and inflict on the country only such candidates as are able to obtain nominations by intrgue or the contemptible compromise of expediency. This is all wrong, and, if long persisted in, will ruin the nation; for it is secretly, silently and surely, establishing a masked despotism, more dangerous than the seditious factions of military Mexico, because they are open to the gaze of all, and may be repressed by the ultimate victory of good sense. According to our observation for the last twenty years, although some great and wholesome principles have been decided during that time,-party contests have been chiefly carried on, not to ascertain who is right, or who may be the best public officer; but, simply to preserve factional organizations, and thus, to keep constantly in the field two great political armies. The evils of this unconstitutional system are evident; for our national charter recognizes no intervening power between the candidate and the elector. It makes social and political bitterness; it creates faction within faction, and establishes petty dictatorships in each; it makes representatives of caucuses and not of constituen

ces; it impairs individual liberty and responsibility, and it debases candidates into the loyal servitors of those intriguers, by subserviency to whom they obtain favor and office. Political factions and seditions are as dangerous as military. THE PEOPLE and not THE PARTY is the true idea of legitimate democracy.

D. Alembert once said that "two kinds of creatures reach the tops of pyramids-eagles and reptiles," those who worm their way in slimy paths to the apex, and those who light upon it with glancing eye and expanded wing.

It is the genius of American institutions that our people should fly and not crawl. Eagles are the national emblems of both Mexico and the United States. The bird of our country is represented as bearing in its talons the arrows of war and the olive branch of peace, while that of Mexico strives to slay the serpent that struggles in its grasp. May both of them drop the arrows and the snake, and retain alone the type of eternal friendship! B. M.

ERRATUM. In the list of titles of this article, the name of the historian Zavala is by mistake printed Tavala.

ART. IV. The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England. By JOHN LORD CAMPBELL, A.M., F.R.S.E. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard. 3 vols. 8vo. 1847.

THE first series of this valuable and highly interesting work has been recently republished in the United States, in three volumes, bringing down the lives of the Lord Chancellors, from the earliest period of English history to the revolution of 1688. A second series, in the like number of volumes, will conclude the work, continuing the lives of the Lord Chancellors from the revolution to the reign of George IV. The present volumes end with a sketch of that remarkable personage, Lord Jeffreys, better known, as Chief Justice, for the multitude of his judicial murders, than for any thing which he did as Lord Chancellor of England. The succeeding volumes will close with the life of Lord Eldon, one of England's most illustrious Chancellors, and who had the honor of sitting longer on the wool-sack than any of his predecessors.