on pressing request, take it up again, being a | the esplanade there. The ceremonies and de man indispensable. Thrice, or at least twice, liberations, as described by General Miller, are did he, in different places, painfully construct somewhat surprising; still more the concluda Free Constitution; consisting of "two cham- ing civic feast, which lasts for three days, which bers, and a supreme governor for life with consists of horses' flesh for the solid part, and liberty to name his successor," the reasonablest horses' blood with ardent spirits ad libuum for democratic constitution you could well con- the liquid, consumed with such alacrity, with struct; and twice, or at least once, did the such results as one may fancy. However, the people, on trial, declare it disagreeable. He women had prudently removed all the arms was of old, well known in Paris; in the disso- beforehand; nay, "five or six of these poor lute, the philosophico-political and other cir- women, taking it by turns, were always found cles there. He has shone in many a gay in a sober state, watching over the rest;" so Parisian soirée, this Simon Bolivar; and he, that comparatively little mischief was done, in his later years, in autumn, 1825, rode and only “one or two" deaths by quarrel took triumphant into Potosi and the fabulous Inca place. Cities, with clouds of feathered Indians somersetting and warwhopping round him*-and as the famed Cerro, metalliferous Mountain, came in sight, the bells all pealed out, and there was a thunder of artillery," says General Miller! If this is not a Ulysses, Polytlas and Polymetis, a much enduring and many counselled man; where was there one? Truly a Ulysses whose history were worth its ink,had the Homer that could do it, made his appearance! Of General San Martin, too, there will be something to be said. General San Martin, when we last saw him, twenty years ago or -through the organs of the authentic santat Mr. Miers, had a handsome house in Mendoza, and "his own portrait, as I remarked, hung up between those of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington." In Mendoza, cheerful, mudbuilt, whitewashed Town, seated at the eastern base of the Andes, "with its shady public walk well paved and swept;" looking out pleasantly, on this hand, over wide horizons of Pampa wilderness; pleasantly on that, to the Rocky-chain, Cordillera they call it, of the sky-piercing Mountains, capt in snow, or with volcanic fumes issuing from them: there dwelt General Ex-Generalissimo San Martin, ruminating past adventures over half the world; and had his portrait hung up between Napoleon's and the Duke of Wellington's. Did the reader ever hear of San Martin's march over the Andes in Chile? It is a feat worth looking at; comparable, most likely, to Hannibal's march over the Alps, while there was yet no Simplon or Mont-Cénis highway; and it transacted itself in the year 1817. South American armies think little of picking their way through the gullies of the Andes; so the Buenos-Ayres people, having driven out their own Spaniards, and established the reign of freedom, though in a precarious manner, thought it were now good to drive the Spaniards out of Chile, and establish the reign of freedom there also instead: whereupon San Martin, commander at Mendoza, was appointed to do it. By way of preparation, for he began from afar, San Martin, while an army is getting ready at Mendoza, assembles "at the fort of San Carlos by the Aguanda river," some days' journey to the south, all attainable tribes of the Pehuenche Indians, to a solemn Palaver, so they name it, and civic entertainment, on • Memoirs of General Miller. Few The Pehuenches having drunk their ardentwater and horses' blood in this manner, and sworn eternal friendship to San Martin, went home, and-communicated to his enemies, across the Andes, the road he meant to take. This was what San Martin had foreseen and meant, the knowing mar! He hastened his preparations, got his artillery slung on poles, his men equipt with knapsacks and haversacks, his mules in readiness; and, in all stillness, set forth from Mendoza by another road. things in late war, according to General Mil ler, have been more noteworthy than this march. The long straggling line of soldiers, six thousand and odd, with their quadrupeds and baggage, winding through the heart of the Andes, breaking for a brief moment the old abysmal solitudes!-For you farre along, on some narrow roadway, through stony laby rinths; huge rock-mountains hanging over your head, on this hand; and under your feet, on that, the roar of mountain-cataracts, horror of bottomless chasms; the very winds and echoes howling on you in an almost preternatural manner. Towering rock-barriers rise sky-high before you, and behind you, and around you; intricate the outgate! The roadway is narrow; footing none of the best. Sharp turns there are, where it will behove you to mind your paces; one false step, and you will need no second; in the gloomy jaws of the abyss you vanish, and the spectral winds howl requiem. Somewhat better are the sus pension bridges, made of bamboo and leather. though they swing like see-saws: men are stationed with lassos, to gin you dexterously, and fish you up from the torrent, if you trip there. Through this kind of country did San Martin march; straight towards San Iago, to fight the Spaniards and deliver Chile. For ammunition wagons he had sorras, sledges, canoeshaped boxes, made of dried bull's-hide. His cannons were carried on the back of mules. each cannon on two mules judiciously harnessed: on the packsaddle of your foremost mule, there rested with firm girths a long strong pole; the other end of which (forked end, we suppose) rested, with like girths, on the packsaddle of the hindmost mule; your cannon was slung with leathern straps on this pole, and so travelled, swaying and dangling, yet moderately secure. In the knapsack of each soldier was eight days' provender, dried beef ground into snuff-powder, with a modicum of pepper, and a slight seasoning of biscuit of maizemeal; "store of onions, of garlic," was not wanting: Paraguay tea could be boiled at eventide, by fire of scrub-bushes, or almost of rock-lichens or dried mule-dung. No further baggage was permitted: each soldier lay, at night, wrapt in his poncho, with his knapsack for pillow, under the canopy of heaven; lullabied by hard travail: and sank soon enough into steady nose-melody, into the foolishest rough colt-dance of unimaginable Dreams. Had he not left much behind him in the Pampas, mother, mistress, what not; and was like to find somewhat, if he ever got across to Chile living? What an entity, one of those night-leaguers of San Martin; all steadily snoring there, in the heart of the Andes, under the eternal stars! Wayworn sentries with difficulty keep themselves awake: tired mules chew barley rations, or doze on three legs; the feeble watchfire will hardly kindle a cigar; Canopus and the Southern Cross glitter down; and all snores steadily, begirt by granite deserts, looked on by the constellations in that manner! San Martin's improvident soldiers ate out their week's rations almost in half the time; and for the last three days, had to rush on, spurred by hunger: this also the knowing San Martin had foreseen; and knew that they could bear it, these rugged Guachos of his; nay, that they would march all the faster for it. On the eighth day, hungry as wolves, swift and sudden as a torrent from the mountains, they disembogued; straight towards San Iago, to the astonishment of men;-struck the doubly astonished Spaniards into dire misgivings; and then, in pitched fight, after due manœuvres, into total defeat on the "Plains of Maypo," and again, positively for the last time, on the Plains or Heights of "Chacabuco;" and completed the "deliverance of Chile," as was thought, for ever and a day.. Alas, the "deliverance of Chile was but commenced; very far from completed. Chile, after many more deliverances, up to this hour, is always but "delivered," from one set of evil doers to another set! San Martin's Manœuvres to liberate Peru, to unite Peru and Chile, and become some Washington-Napoleon of the same, did not prosper so well. The suspicion of mankind had to rouse itself; Liberator Bolivar had to be called in; and some revolution or two to take place in the interim. San Martin sees himself peremptorily, though with courtesy, complimented over the Andes again; and in due leisure, at Mendoza, hangs his portrait between Napoleon's and Wellington's. Mr. Miers considered him a fairspoken, obliging, if somewhat artful man. Might not the Chilenos as well have taken him for their Napoleon? They have gone farther, and, as yet, fared little better! The world-famous General O'Higgins, for example, he, after some revolution or two, became Director of Chile; but so terribly hampered by "class-legislation," and the like, what could he make of it? Almost nothing! O'Higgins is clearly of Irish breed; and, though a Chileno born, and “natural son of Don Ambrosio O'Higgins, formerly the Spanish Viceroy of Chile," carries his Hibernianism in his very face. A most cheery, jovial, buxom countenance, radiant with pepticity, good humour, and manifold effectuality in peace and war! Of his battles and adventures let some luckier epic writer sing or speak. One thing we Foreign Reviewers will always remember: his father's immense merits towards Chile in the matter of highways. Till Don Ambrosio arrived to govern Chile, some half century ago, there probably was not a made road of ten miles long from Panama to Cape Horn. Indeed, except his roads, we fear there is hardly any yet. One omits the old Inca causeways, as too narrow (being only three feet broad) and altogether unfrequented in the actual ages. Don Ambrosia made, with incredible industry and perseverance and skill, in every direction, roads. From San Iago to Valparaiso, where only sure-footed mules with their packsaddles carried goods, there can now wooden-axled cars, loud-sounding, or any kind of vehicle, commodiously roll. It was he that shaped these passes, through the Andes, for most part; hewed them out from mule-tracks into roads, certain of them. And think of his casuchas. Always on the higher inhospitable solitudes, at every few miles' distance, stands a trim brick cottage, or cashucha, into which the forlorn traveller, introducing himself, finds covert and grateful safety; nay food and refection,-for there are " iron boxes" of pounded beef or other provender, iron boxes of charcoal; to all which the traveller, having bargained with the Post-office authorities, carries a key.* Steel and tinder are not wanting to him, nor due iron skillet, with water from the stream: there he, striking a light, cooks hoarded victuals at eventide, amid the lonely pinnacles of the world, and blesses Governor O'Higgins. With 66 'both hands," it may be hoped,-if there is vivacity of mind in him: Had you seen this road before it was made, you would lift both your hands and bless General Wado. It affects one with real pain to hear from Mr. Miers, that the war of liberty has half ruined these O'Higgins casuchas. Patriot soldiers, in want of more warmth than the charcoal box could yield, have not scrupled to tear down the door, doorcase, or whatever wooden thing could be come at, and burn it, on the spur of the moment. The storm-stayed traveller, who sometimes, in threatening weather, has to linger here for days, "for fifteen days together," does not lift both his hands, and bless the Patriot soldier! Nay, it appears, the O'Higgins roads, even in the plain country, have not, of late years, been repaired, or in the least attended to, se distressed was the finance department; and are now fast verging towards impassability and the condition of mule-tracks again. What a set of animals are men and Chilenos If an O'Higgins did not now and then appear among them, what would become of the unfortunates? Can you wonder that an O'Higgins sometimes loses temper with them; snuts the persuasive outspread hand, clutching some sharpest hide whip, some terrible sword of justice or gallows Miers. lasso therewith, instead, and becomes a Dr. Francia now and then! Both the O'Higgins and Francia, it seems probal e, are phases of the same character; both, ne begins to fear, are indispensable from the to time, in a world inhabited by men and (ilenos! of Man; under the most unpropitious circumstances; and have hitherto got only to the length we see! Nay now, it seems, they do possess "universities," which are at least schools with other than monk teachers: they have got libraries, though as yet almost nobody reads them, and our friend Miers, re peatedly knocking at all doors of the Grand Chile National Library, could never to this hour discover where the key lay, and had to content himself with looking in through the windows. Miers, as already hinted, desiderates unspeakable improvements in Chile;desiderates, indeed, as the basis of all, an immense increase of soap-and-water. Yes, thou sturdy Miers, dirt is decidedly to be removed, whatever improvements, temporal or spiritual, may be intended next? According to Miers, the open, still more the secret personal nastitowards the sublime. Finest silks, gold brocades, pearl necklaces, and diamond ear-drops, are no security against it: alas, all is not gold that glitters; somewhat that glitters is mere putrid fish-skin! Decided, enormously increased appliance of soap-and-water, in all its branches, with all its adjuncts; this, according to Miers, would be an improvement. He says also ("in his haste," as is probable, like the Hebrew Psalmist) that all Chileno men are liars; all, or in appearance, all! A people that uses almost no soap, and speaks almost no truth, but goes about in that fashion, in a state of personal nastiness, and also of spiritual nastiness, approaching the sublime; such peo As to O'Higgins the Second Patriot, Natural son O'Higgins, he, as we said, had almost no success whatever as a governor; being hampered by class-legislation. Alas, a governor Chile cannot succeed. governor there has to resign himself to the want of success; and should say, in cheerful interrogative tone, like that Pope elect, who, showing himself on the balcony, was greeted with mere howls, "Non piacemmo al popolo ?"—and thereupon proceed cheerfully to the next fact. Governing is a rude business everywhere; but in South America it is of quite primitive rudeness; they have no parliamentary way of changing minis-ness of those remote populations, rises almost tries as yet; nothing but the rude primitive way of hanging the old ministry on gibbets, that the new may be installed! Their government has altered its name, says the sturdy Mr. Miers, rendered sulky by what he saw there: altered its name, but its nature continues as before. Shameless peculation, malversation, that is their government: op, ression formerly by Spanish officials, now by native haciendados, land-proprietors,—the thing called justice still at a great distance from them, says the sulky Mr. Miers!-Yes, bu. coming always, answer we; every new gibbeting of an old ineffectual ministry bringing justice somewhat nearer! Nay, as Miers himself has to admit, certain improvements are already indisputa-ple is not easy to govern well!ble. Trade everywhere, in spite of multiplex confusions, has increased, is increasing: the But undoubtedly by far the notablest of days of somnolent monopoly and the old Ac- all these South American phenomena is Dr. apulco ship are gone, quite over the horizon. Francia and his Dictatorship in Paraguay; Two good, or partially good measures, the concerning whom and which we have now very necessity of things has everywhere more particularly to speak. Francia and his brought about in those poor countries: clip-"reign of terror" have excited some interest, ping of the enormous bat-wings of the clergy, and emancipating of the slaves. Bat-wings, we say; for truly the South American clergy had grown to be as a kind of bat-vampires:readers have heard of that huge South American blood-sucker, which fixes its bill in your circulating vital-fluid as you lie asleep, and there sucks; waving you with the motion of its detestable leather wings into ever deeper sleep; and so drinking till it is satisfied, and you do not awaken any more! The South American governments, all in natural feud with the old church-dignitaries, and likewise all in great straits for cash, have everywhere confiscated the monasteries, cashiered the disobedient dignitaries, melted the superfluous church-plate into piasters; and, on the whole, shorn the wings of their vampire; so that if it still suck, you will at least have a chance of awakening before death!-Then again, the very want of soldiers of liberty led to the emancipating of blacks, yellows, and other coloured persons; your mulatto, nay your negro, if well drilled, will stand fire as well as another. Poor South American emancipators; they began with Volney, Raynal and Company, at that gospel of Social Contract and the Rights much vague wonder in this country; and especially given a great shock to constitutional feeling. One would rather wish to know Dr. Francia;-but unhappily one cannot! Out of such a murk of distracted shadows and rumours, in the other hemisphere of the world, who would pretend at present to decipher the real portraiture of Dr. Francia and his Life? None of us can. A few credible features, wonderful enough, original enough in our constitutional time, will perhaps to the mpartial eye disclose themselves; these, with some endeavour to interpret these, may lead certain readers into various reflections, constitutional and other, not entirely without benefit. Certainly, as we say, nothing could well shock the constitutional feeling of mankind, as Dr. Francia has done. Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse, and indeed the whole breed of tyrants, one hoped, had gone many hundred years ago, with their reward; and here, under our very nose, rises a new "tyrant," claiming also his reward from us! Precisely when constitutional liberty was beginning to be understood a little, and we flattered ourselves that by due ballot-boxes, by due registration | Travels in Chile. Paraguenos, though not a literary people, can many of them spell and write, and are not without a discriminating sense of true and untrue, why should not some real "Life of Francia," from those parts, be still possible! If a writer of genius arise there, he is hereby invited to the enterprise. Surely in all places your writing genius ought to rejoice over an acting genius, when he falls in with such; and say to himself: "Here or nowhere is the thing for me to write of! Why do I keep pen and ink at all, if not to apprize men of this singular acting genius and the like of him? My fine-arts and aesthetics, my epics, literatures. poetics, if I will think of it, do all at bottom mean either that or else nothing whatever!" courts, and bursts of parliamentary eloquence, | Francia, Dictator of Paraguay, is, at present, something like a real National Palaver would to the European mind, little other than a be got up in those countries, arises this tawny- chimera; at best, the statement of a puzzle, visaged, lean, inexorable Dr. Francia; claps to which the solution is still to seek. As the you an embargo on all that; says to constitutional liberty, in the most tyrannous manner, Hitherto, and no farther! It is an undeniable, though an almost incredible fact, that Francia, a lean private individual, Practitioner of Law, and Doctor of Divinity, did, for twenty or near thirty years, stretch out his rod over the foreign commerce of Paraguay, saying to it, Cease! The ships lay high and dry, their pitchless seams all yawning on the clay banks of the Parana; and no man could trade but by Francia's license. If any person entered Paraguay, and the Doctor did not like his papers, his talk, conduct, or even the cut of his face, it might be the worse for such person! Nobody could leave Paraguay on any pretext whatever. It mattered not that you were man of science, astronomer, geologer, astrologer, wizard of the north; Francia heeded none of these things. The whole world knows of M. Aimé Bonpland; how Francia seized him, descending on his tea-establishment in Entre Rios, like an obscene vulture, and carried him into the interior, contrary even to the law of nations; how the great Humboldt and other high persons expressly applied to Dr. Francia, calling on him, in the name of human science, and as it were under penalty of reprobation, to liberate M. Bonpland; and how Dr. Francia made no answer, and M. Bonpland did not return to Europe, and indeed has never yet returned. It is also admitted that Dr. Francia had a gallows, had jailers, law-fiscals, officials; and executed, in his time, "upwards of forty persons," some of them in a very summary manner. Liberty of private judgment, unless it kept its mouth shut, was at an end in Paraguay. Paraguay lay under interdict, cut off for above twenty years from the rest of the world, by a new Dionysius of Paraguay. All foreign commerce had ceased; how much more all domestic constitution-building! These are strange facts. Dr. Francia, we may conclude at least, was not a common man but an uncommon. How unfortunate that there is almost no knowledge of him procurable at present! Next to none. The Paraguenos can in many cases spell and read, but they are not a literary people; and, indeed, this Doctor was, perhaps, too awful a practical phenomenon to be calmly treated of in the literary way. Your Breughel paints his sea-storm, not while the ship is labouring and cracking, but after he has got to shore, and is safe under cover! Our Buenos-Ayres friends, again, who are not without habits of printing, lay at a great distance from Francia, under great obscurations of quarrel and controversy with him; their constitutional feeling shocked to an extreme degree by the things he did. To them, there could little intelligence float down, on those long muddy waters, through those vast distracted countries, that was not more or less of a distracted nature; and then from BuenosAyres over into Europe, there is another long tract of distance, liable to new distractions. Hitherto our chief source of information as to Francia is a little book, the second on our list, set forth in French some sixteen years ago, by the Messrs. Rengger and Longchamp. Translations into various languages were executed; of that into English it is our painful duty to say that no man, except in the case of extreme necessity, shall use it as reading. The translator, having little fear of human detection, and seemingly none at all of divine or diabolic, has done his work even unusually ill; with ig norance, with carelessness, with dishonesty prepense; coolly omitting whatsoever he saw that he did not understand:-poor man, if he yet survive, let him reform in time! He has made a French book, which was itself but lean and dry, into the most wooden of English false books; doing evil as he could in that matter;and claimed wages for it, as if the feat deserved wages first of all! Reformation, even on the small scale, is highly necessary. The Messrs. Rengger and Longchamp were, and we hope still are, two Swiss Surgeons; who in the year 1819 resolved on carrying their talents into South America, into Paraguay, with views towards "natural history," among other things. After long towing and struggling in those Parana floods, and distracted provinces, after much detention by stress of weather and of war, they arrived accordingly in Francia's country; but found that without Francia's leave they could not quit it again. Francia was now a Dionysius of Paraguay. Paraguay had grown to be, like some mousetraps and other contrivances of art and nature, easy to enter, impossible to get out of. Our brave Sur geons, our brave Rengger (for it is he alone of the two that speaks and writes) reconciled themselves; were set to doctoring of Francia's soldiery, of Francia's self; collected plants and beetles; and, for six years, endured their lot rather handsomely at length, in 1825, the em bargo was for a time lifted, and they got home. This book was the consequence. It is not a good book, but at that date there was, on the subject, no other book at all; nor is there yet any other better, or as good. We consider it to be authentic, veracious, moderately accurate; though lean and dry, it is intelligible, rational; in the French original, not unreadable. We may After all, brevity is the soul of wit! There is an endless merit in a man's knowing when to have done. The stupidest man, if he will be brief in proportion, may fairly claim some hearing from us: he too, the stupidest man, has seen something, heard something, which is his own, distinctly peculiar, never seen or heard by any man in this world before; let him tell us that, he, brief in proportion, shall be welcome! say it embraces up to this date, the present date, | no dates in these inextricable documents,) the all of importance that is yet known in Europe Messrs. Robertson were lucky enough to take about the Doctor Despot; add to this its indispu- final farewell of Paraguay, and carry their com Cable brevity; the fact that it can be read sooner mercial enterprises into other quarters of that by several hours than any other Dr. Francia: vast continent, where the reign was not of these are its excellences,-considerable, though terror. Their voyagings, counter-voyagings, wholly of a comparative sort. comings and goings, seem to have been extensive, frequent, inextricably complex; to Europe, to Tucuman, to Glasgow, to Chile, to Laswade and elsewhither; too complex for a succinct intelligence, as that of our readers has to be at present. Sufficient for us to know, that the Messrs. Robertson did bodily, and for good, return to their own country some few years since; with what net result of cash is but dimly adumbrated in these documents; certainly with some increase of knowledge-had the unfolding of it but been brief in proportion! Indisputably the Messrs. Robertson had somewhat to tell their eyes had seen some new things, of which their hearts and understandings had taken hold more or less. In which circumstances the Messrs. Robertson decided on publishing a book. Arrangements being made, two volumes of "Letters on Paraguay" came out, with due welcome from the world, in 1839. The Messrs. Robertson, with their "Francia's Reign of Terror," and other books on South America, have been much before the world of late; and failed not of a perusal from this reviewer; whose next sad duty it now is to say a word about them. The Messrs. Robertson, some thirty or five-and-thirty years ago, were two young Scotchmen, from the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, as would seem: who, under fair auspices, set out for Buenos-Ayres, thence for We have read these "Letters" for the first Paraguay, and other quarters of that remote time lately: a book of somewhat aqueous strucContinent, in the way of commercial adventure. ture: immeasurably thinner than one could Being young men of vivacity and open eye- have wished; otherwise not without merit. It sight, they surveyed with attentive view those is written in an off-hand, free-glowing, very art convulsed regions of the world; wherein it was less, very incorrect style of language, of thought, evident that revolution raged not a little; but and of conception; breathes a cheerful, eupepalso that precious metals, cowhides, Jesuits' | tic, social spirit, as of adventurous South-Amebark, and multiplex commodities, were never-rican Britons, worthy to succeed in business; theless extant; and iron or brazen implements, gives one, here and there, some visible concrete ornaments, cotton and woollen clothing, and Bri- feature, some lively glimpse of those remote tish manufactures not a few, were objects of de-sun-burnt countries; and has throughout a kind sire to mankind. The brothers Robertson, acting of bantering humour or quasi-humour, a jovion these facts, appear to have prospered, to ality and healthiness of heart, which is comhave extensively flourished in their commerce; fortable to the reader, in some measure. A which they gradually extended up the river book not to be despised in these dull times: one Plate, to the city of the Seven Streams or Cur- of that extensive class of books which a reader rents, (Corrientes so called.) and higher even to can peruse, so to speak, "with one eye shut Assumpcion, metropolis of Paraguay; in which and the other not open;" a considerable luxury latter place, so extensive did the commercial for some readers. These "Letters on Parainterests grow, it seemed at last expedient that guay" meeting, as would seem, a unanimous one or both of the prosperous brothers should approval, it was now determined by the Messrs. take up his personal residence. Personal resi-Robertson that they would add a third volume, dence accordingly they did take up, one or both and entitle it "Dr. Francia's Reign of Terror." of them, and maintain, in a fluctuating way, now They did so, and this likewise the present rein this city, now in that, of the De la Plata, viewer has read. Unluckily the authors had, Parana or Paraguay country, for a considera- as it were, nothing more whatever to say about ble space of years; how many years, in precise Dr. Francia, or next to nothing; and under this arithmetic, it is impossible, from these inextrica-condition, it must be owned they have done biy complicated documents now before us, to ascertain. In Paraguay itself, in Assumpcion city itseif, it is very clear, the brothers Robertson did, successively or simultaneously, in a fluctuating inextricable manner, live for certain years; and Occasionally saw Dr. Francia with their own eyes, though to them or others, he had not yet become notable. Mountains of cow and other hides, it would appear quitted those countries by movement of the brothers Robertson, to be worn out in Europe as tanned boots and horse-harness, with more or less satisfaction,-not without due profit to the merchants, we shall hope. About the time of Dr. Francia's beginning his “ reign of terror," or earlier it may be, (for there are their book with what success was well possible. Given a cubic inch of respectable Castile soap, To lather it up in water so as to fill one puncheon wine-measure: this is the problem; let a man have credit (of its kind) for doing his problem! The Messrs. Robertson have picked almost every fact of significance from "Rengger and Longchamp," adding some not very significant reminiscences of their own; this is the square inch of soap; you lather it up in Robertsonian loquacity, joviality, Commercial-Inn banter, Leading-Article philoso phy, or other aqueous vehicles, till it fills the puncheon, the volume of four hundred pages, and say "There!" The public, it would seem, did not fling even this in the face of the |