venders, but bought it as a puncheon filled; and the consequences are already here: Three volumes more on "South America," from the same assidious Messrs Robertson! These also, in his eagerness, this present reviewer has read; and has, alas, to say that they are sim ply the old volumes in new vocables, under a new figure. Intrinsically all that we did not already know of these three volumes, there are craftsmen of no great eminence who will undertake to write it in one sheet! Yet there they stand, three solid-looking volumes, a thousand printed pages and upwards; three puncheons more lathered out of the old square inch of Castile soap! It is too bad. A necessitous readywitted Irishman sells you an indifferent greyhorse; steals it overnight, paints it black, and sells it to you again on the morrow; he is haled before judges, sharply cross-questioned, tried and almost executed, for such adroitness in horse-flesh: but there is no law yet as to books!

already known; that the preliminary question be rigorously put, Are several volumes the space to hold it, or a small fraction of one volume?

On the whole, it is a sin, good reader, though there is no Act of Parliament against it; an indubitable malefaction or crime. No mortal has a right to wag his tongue, much less to wag his pen, without saying something: he knows not what mischief he does, past computation; scattering words without meaning,to afflict the whole world yet, before they cease! For thistle-down flies abroad on all winds and airs of wind: idle thistles, idle dandelions, and other idle products of Nature or the human mind, propagate themselves in that way; like to cover the face of the earth, did not man's indignant providence with reap-hook, with rake, with autumnal steel-and-tinder, intervene. It is frightful to think how every idle volume flies abroad like an idle globular downbeard, embryo of new millions; every word of it a potential seed of infinite new downbeards and volumes; for the mind of man is feracious, is voracious; germinative, above all things, of the downbeard species! Why, the author corps in Great Britain, every soul of them inclined to grow mere dandelions if permitted, is now supposed to be about ten thousand strong; and the reading corps, who read merely to escape from themselves, with one eye shut and the other not open, and will put up with almost any dandelion or thing which they can read without opening both their eyes, amounts to twenty-seven millions all but a few! O could the Messrs. Robertson, spirited, articulatespeaking men, once know well in what a comparatively blessed mood you close your brief, intelligent, conclusive M. de la Condamine, and feel that you have passed your evening well and nobly, as in a temple of wisdom,-not ill and disgracefully, as in brawling tavern supper-rooms, with fools and noisy persons,-ah, in that case, perhaps the Messrs. Robertson would write their new work on Chile in part of a volume!

M. de la Condamine, about a century ago, was one of a world-famous company that went into those equinoctial countries, and for the space of nine or ten years did exploits there. From Quito to Cuença he measured you degrees of the meridian, climbed mountains, took observations, had adventures; wild Creoles opposing Spanish nescience to human science; wild Indians throwing down your whole cargo of instruments occasionally in the heart of remote deserts, and striking work there.* M. de la Condamine saw bull-fights at Cuença, five days running; and, on the fifth day, saw his unfortunate too audacious surgeon massacred by popular tumult there. He sailed the entire length of the Amazons River, in Indian canoes; over narrow Pongo rapids, over infinite mudwaters, the infinite tangled wilderness with its reeking desolation on the right hand of him and on the left;-and had mischances, adventures, and took celestial observations all the way, and made remarks! Apart altogether from his meridian degrees, which belong in a very strict sense to world-history and the advancement of all Adam's sinful posterity, this But enough of this Robertsonian department; man and his party saw and suffered many which we must leave to the Fates and Supreme hundred times as much of mere romance ad- Providences. These spirited, articulate-speakventure as the Messrs. Robertson did:- ing Robertsons are far from the worst of their Madame Godin's passage down the Amazons, kind; nay, among the best, if you wil! ;-only and frightful life-in-death amid the howling unlucky in this case, in coming across the forest-labyrinths, and wrecks of her dear autumnal steel and tinder! Let it cease to friends, amounts to more adventure of itself rain angry sparks on them: enough now, and than was ever dreamt of in the Robertsonian more than enough. To cure that unfortunate world. And of all this M. de la Condamine department by philosophical criticism-the atgives pertinent, lucid, and conclusively intel-tempt is most vain. Who will dismount on a ligible and credible account in one very small octavo volume; not quite the eighth part of what Messrs. Robertson have already written, in a not pertinent, not lucid, or conclusively intelligible and credible manner. And the Messrs. Robertson talk repeatedly, in their last volumes, of writing still other volumes on Chile "if the public will encourage." The Pub. will be a monstrous fool if it do. The Public ought to stipulate first that the real new knowledge forthcoming there about Chile be separated from the knowledge or ignorance Condamine: Relation d'un Voyage dans l'Intérieur de l'Amérique méridionale.

hasty journey, with the day declining, to attack musquito-swarms with the horse whip? Spur swiftly through them; breathing perhaps some pious prayer to heaven. By the horse whip they cannot be killed. Drain out the swamps where they are bred,—Ah, conldst thon do something towards that! And in the mean while: How to get on with this of Dr Francia.

The materials, as our reader sees, are of the miserablest: mere intricate inanity (if we except poor wooden e eger.) and little more; not facts, but broken shadows of facts; clouds of confused bluster and jargon-the whole still more bewildered in the Robertsons, by wha

we may call a running shriek of constitutional | dova High Seminary; and how he took to it, denunciation, "sanguinary tyrant," and so forth. How is any picture of Francia to be fabricated out of that? Certainly, first of all, by omission of the running shriek! This latter we shall totally omit. Francia, the sanguinary tyrant, was not bound to look at the world througn Rengger's eyes, through Parish Robertson's eyes, but faithfully through his own eyes. We are to consider that, in all human likelihood, this Dionysius of Paraguay did mean something; and then ask in quietness, What? The running shriek once hushed, perhaps many things will compose themselves, and straggling fractions of information, almost infinitessimally small, may become unexpectedly luminous !

Rengger says, Divinity; the Robertsons, like- | there as it burns better or worse, in many lier to be incorrect, call him Doctor of Laws. figures, through the whole life of him, is very To our present readers it is all one, or nearly notable to me. Blue flame though it be, it so. Rodriguez quitted the Tucuman Alma has to burn up considerable quantities of poiMater, with some beard on his chin, and reap-sonous lumber from the general face of Parapeared in Assumpcion to look out for practice at the bar.

What had Rodriguez contrived to learn, or grow to, under this his Alma Mater in Cordova, when he quitted her? The answer is a mere guess; his curriculum, we again say, is not yet known. Some faint smattering of Arithmetic, or the everlasting laws of numbers; faint smattering of Geometry, everlasting laws of Shapes; these things we guess, not altogether in the dark, Rodriguez did learn, and found extremely remarkable. Curious enough: That round Globe put into that round Drum, to touch it at the ends and all round, it is precisely as if you clapt 2 into the inside of 3, not a jot more, not a jot less: wonder at it, O Francia; for in fact it is a thing to make one pause! Old Greek Archimedeses, Pythagorases, dusky Indians, old nearly as the hills, detected such things; and they have got across into Paraguay, into this brain of thine, thou happy Francia. How is it, too, that the Almighty Maker's planets run in those heavenly spaces, in paths which are conceivable in thy poor human head as Sections of a cone? The thing thou conceivest as an Ellipse, the Almighty Maker has set his Planets to roll in that. Clear proof, which neither Loyola nor Usandwonto can contravene, that Thou too art denizen of this universe; that thou too, in some inconceivable manner, wert present at the Conncil of the Gods!-Faint smatterings of such things Francia did learn in Tucuman. Endless heavy fodderings of Jesuit theology, poured on him and round him by the wagonload, incessantly, and year after year, he did not learn; but left lying there as shot rubbish. On the other hand, some slight inkling of human grammatical vocables, especially of French vocables, seems probable. French vocables; bodily garments of the "Encyclopedie" and Gospel according to Volney, Jean Jacques and Company; of infinite import to

Francia!

guay; and singe the profound impenetrable forest-jungle, spite of all its brambles and lianas, into a very black condition,-intimating that there shall be disease and removal on the part of said forest-jungle; peremptory removal; that the blessed Sunlight shall again look in upon his cousin Earth, tyrannously hidden from him, for so many centuries now! Courage, Rodriguez!

Rodriguez, indifferent to such remote considerations, successfully addicts himself to lawpleadings, and general private studies, in the city of Assumpcion. We have always understood he was one of the best advocates, perhaps the very best, and, what is still more, the justest that ever took briefs in that country. This the Robertsonian "Reign of Terror" itself is willing to admit, nay repeatedily asserts, and impresses on us. He was so just and true, while a young man; gave such divine prognostics of a life of nobleness; and then, in his riper years, so belied all that! Shameful to think of; he bade fair, at one time, to be a friend of humanity of the first water; and then gradually, hardened by political success, and love of power, he became a mere ravenous goul, or solitary thief in the night; stealing the constitutional palladiums from their parliament houses-and executed upward of forty persons! Sad to consider what men and friends of humanity will come to!

For the rest it is not given to this or as yet to any editor, till a Biography arrive from Paraguay, to shape out, with the smallest clearness, a representation of Francia's existence as an Assumpcion Advocate; the scene is so distant, the conditions of it so unknown. Assumpcion city, near three hundred years old now, lies in free-and-easy fashion, on the left bank of the Parana River, embosomed among fruit-forests, rich tropical umbrage; thick wood round it everywhere,-which serves for defence too against the Indians. Approach by which of the various roads you will, it is through miles of solitary shady avenue, shutting out the sun's glare;

Nay, is it not in some sort beautiful to see the sacred flame of ingenuous human curi-over-canopying, as with grateful green awnosity, love of knowledge, awakened, amid the ing, the loose sand-highway,-where, in the damp somnolent vapours, real and metaphori- early part of this century, (date undiscoverable cal, the damp tropical poison-jungles, and fat in those intricate volumes.) Mr. Parish RobertLethean stupefactions and entanglements, even son, advancing on horseback, met one cart in the heart of a poor Paraguay Creole? Sa- driven by a smart brown girl, in red bodice, cred flame, no bigger yet than that of a far- with long black hair, not unattractive to look thing rushlight, and with nothing but second- upon; and for a space of twelve miles, no hand French class-books in science, and in other articulate-speaking thing whatever.* politics and morals nothing but the Raynals The people of that profuse climate live in and Rousseaus, to feed it: an ill-fed, lank-qua- a careless abundance, troubling themselves vering, most blue-coloured, almost ghastly-about few things; build what wooden carts, looking flame; but a needful one, a kind of hide-beds, mud-brick houses, are indispenssacred one even that! Thou shalt love know-able; import what of ornamental lies handiest ledge, search what is the truth of this God's Universe; thou art privileged and bound to love it, to search for it, in Jesuit Tucuman, in all places that the sky covers; and shall try even Volneys for help, if there be no other help! This poor blue-coloured inextinguishable flame in the soul of Rodriguez Francia, I

abroad; exchanging it for Paraguay tea in sewed goatskins. Riding through the town of Santa Fé, with Parish Robertson at three in the afternoon, you will find the entire population just risen from its siesta; slipshod, half

Letters on Paraguay

One art they seem to have perfected, and one only-that of riding. Astleys and Ducrows must hide their head, all glories of Newmarket and Epsom dwindle to extinction, in comparison of Guacho horsemanship. Certainly if ever Centaurs lived upon the earth, these are of them. They stick on their horses as if both were one flesh; galloping where there seems hardly path for an ibex; leaping like kan

buttoned; sitting in its front verandahs open | once." They sit on the skull of the cow in to the street, eating pumpkins with voracity,- country places; nay they heat themselves, sunk to the ears in pumpkins; imbibing the and even burn lime, by igniting the carcass of grateful saccharine juices, in a free and easy the cow. way. They look up at the sound of your hoofs, not without good humour. Frondent trees parasol the streets,-thanks to Nature and the Virgin. You will be welcome at their tertulias, a kind of "swarrie," as the flunkey says, "consisting of flirtation and the usual trimmings: swarrie on the table about seven o'clock." Before this, the whole population, it is like, has gone to bathe promiscuously, and cool and purify itself in the Parana: promis-garoos, and flourishing their nooses and bolases cuously, but you have all got linen bathinggarments and can swash about with some decency; a great relief to the human tabernacle in those climates. At your tertulia, it is said, the Andalusian eyes, still bright to the tenth or twelfth generation, are distractive, seductive enough, and argue a soul that would repay cultivating. The beautiful half-savages; full of wild sheet-lightning, which might be made continuously luminous! Tertulia well over, you sleep on hide stretchers, perhaps here and there on a civilized mattrass, within doors or on the housetops.

In the damp flat country parts, where the mosquitoes abound, you sleep on high stages, mounted on four poles, forty feet above the ground, attained by ladders; so high, blessed be the Virgin, no mosquito can follow to sting, -it is a blessing of the Virgin or some other. You sleep there, in an indiscriminate arrangement, each in his several poncho or blanketcloak; with some saddle, deal-box, wooden log, or the like, under your head. For bedtester is the canopy of everlasting blue: for night-lamp burns Canopus in his infinite spaces; mosquitoes cannot reach you, if it please the Powers. And rosy-fingered Morn, suffusing the east with sudden red and gold, and other flame-heraldry of swift-advancing Day, attenuates all dreams; and the sun's first level light-volley sheers away sleep from living creatures everywhere; and living men do then awaken on their four-post stage there, in the Pampas, and might begin with prayer if they liked, one fancies! There is an altar decked on the horizon's edge yonder, is there not; and a cathedral wide enough?-How, over night, you have defended yourselves against vampires, is unknown to this editor.

the while. They can whirl themselves round under the belly of the horse, in cases of warstratagem, and stick fast, hanging on by the mere great toe and heel. You think it is a drove of wild horses galloping up: on a sudden, with wild scream, it becomes a troop of Centaurs with pikes in their hands. Nay, they have the skill, which most of all transcends Newmarket, of riding on horses that are not fed; and can bring fresh speed and alacrity out of a horse which, with you, was on the point of lying down. To ride on three horses with Ducrow they would esteem a small feat: to ride on the broken-winded fractional part of one horse, that is the feat!

Their huts abound in beef, in reek also, and rubbish; excelling in dirt most places that human nature has anywhere inhabited. Poor Guachos! They drink Paraguay tea, sucking it up in succession, through the same tin pipe, from one common skillet. They are hospitable, sooty, leathery, lying, laughing fellows; of excellent talent in their sphere. They have stoicism, though ignorant of Zeno; nay stoicism coupled with real gayety of heart. Amidst their reek, they laugh loud, in rough jolly banter; they twang, in a plaintive manner, rough love-melodies on a kind of guitar; smoke infinite tobacco; and delight in gambling and ardent spirits, ordinary refuge of voracious empty souls. For the same reason, and a better, they delight also in CorpusChristi ceremonies, mass-chantings, and devotional performances. These men are fit to be drilled into something! Their lives stand there like empty capacious bottles, calling to the heavens and the earth, and all Dr. Francias who may pass that way: "Is there nothing to put into us, then? Nothing but nomadic idleness, Jesuit superstition, rubbish, reek, and dry stripes of tough beef?" Ye unhappy Guachos,

several things other, to put into you! But withal, you will observe, the seven devils have first to be put out of you: Idleness, lawless Brutalness, Darkness, Falseness-seven devils or more. And the way to put something into you is, alas, not so plain at present! Iš it— alas, on the whole, is it not perhaps to lay good horse-whips lustily upon you, and cast out these seven devils as a preliminary!

The Guacho population, it must be owned, is not yet fit for constitutional liberty. They are a rude people; lead a drowsy life, of ease-yes, there is something other, there are and sluttish abundance,-one shade, and but one, above a dog's life, which is defined as "ease and scarcity." The arts are in their infancy; and not less the virtues. For equipment, clothing, bedding, household furniture, and general outfit of every kind, those simple populations depend much on the skin of the cow; making of it most things wanted, lasso, bolas, ship-cordage, rimmings of cart-wheels, spatterdashes, beds, and house-doors. In country places they sit on the skull of the cow: General Artigas was seen, and spoken with, by one of the Robertsons, sitting among fieldofficers, all on cow-skulls, toasting stripes of beef, and "dictating to three secretaries at

How Francia passed his days in such a region, where philosophy, as is too clear, was at the lowest ebb? Francia, like Quintus Fixlein, had " perennial fire-proof joys, namely

*Letters on Paraguay.