of a duty, since they may prove useful, or lead to more mature suggestions." Before we close these remarks, we would fain observe, that the artists who are selected to enter the lists of fame have a high and arduous struggle. Now the minds of men so occupied ought to be relieved as much as possible from corroding anxiety, the unfailing attendant on deficiency of worldly means. Our artists and authors are not celebrated for their wealth; there ought, therefore, to be agreements by which each artist should receive stipulated portions of his remuneration in accordance with the state of the work; the periodical payments to be one-third short of the whole amount, which last third should not be paid until the completion. "THE LITTLE RED ROSE." FROM GOETHE. A BOY caught sight of a rose in a bower- Among the boughs; O! the rose was bright MEXICO AND THE GREAT WESTERN From the Edinburgh Review. 1. Life in Mexico during a Residence of Two Years in that Country. By MADAME CALDERON DE LA BARCA. 8vo. London: 1813. 2. Travels in the Great Western Prairies, the Anahuac and Rocky Mountains, and in the Oregon Territory. By THOMAS J. FARNHAM. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1843. MADAME CALDERON DE LA BARCA, the authoress of the very entertaining volume first mentioned above, is, as we are informed, a Scottish lady, bred in New England, and married to a Spaniard, with whom she was domiciled for two years as Ambassadress in Mexico-a curious combination of personal accidents-nor would it be easy to conceive any more favorable, as regards shrewdness, situation, and opportunities, for bringing us acquainted with the fashions of social life in that secluded part of the world. Her book has all the natural liveliness, and tact, and readiness of remark, which are sure to distinguish the first production of a clever woman; while she has really much to tell, and the stores of some years of quiet accumulation to unfold. Would we could say that these delicate qualities survived the first contact with the public in one case in a hundred! Never was traveller better qualified for such a task in such a country, as far as physical resources, courage, and curiosity could go. Her feats of personal strength fill us with amazement. Morning visits and balls all night-rides on horseback and muleback, in straw-hat and reboso, Mexican fashion, of fourteen leagues a-dayjourneys for a week together by diligence, with a running accompaniment of robbers -rattling at full gallop for days and nights, over dikes and ditches, through roaring streams, and over savage barrancas, in Charles the Tenth's old coach, borrowed THE PRINCE OF WALES.-A rumor is current by the Ambassador of a native who bought that the Rev. Samuel Wilberforce, Archdeacon of it a bargain from some speculating FrenchSurrey, has been chosen by her Majesty to superintend the early studies of the Heir Apparent. We man-exploring caves, waterfalls, and need scarcely state, that although such an appoint-mountains, in the intervals, and joining ment is highly probable, and would be regarded in every sort of dissipation which a Mexiwith general satisfaction, there exists no foundation can season will furnish,-all this seems the for the announcement of its having been already The wild boy shouted-"I'll pluck thee, rose, Among the boughs;" but the little rose spoke- Whilst thou thy folly art chiding.' Little rose, little rose, little red rose, Among the bushes hiding! But the rude boy laid his hands on the flower, Among the boughs; O, the rose was caught, made. J. B. lady's very element, and gone through with a hearty, honest good-will, which makes the reader long to have been of her party. Her curiosity is as prodigious as her powers of endurance. The slightest peep of a "lion" is enough to place her on thorns until she has fairly hunted him down. Not a procession within her reach, in this procession-loving country-from the most grotesque, religious farce, enacted in some village near Mexico, up to the grand Holy Thursday of the capital, which she does not delight in seeing out from beginning to end. On the latter occasion she seems to have visited half the churches in the city to see the illuminations, and knelt before every altar in each, until, at length, "our feet," says she, "seemed to move mechanically, and we dropped on our knees before each altar, like machines touched by a spring.". The news of a nun about to take the veil never fails to draw her out; and the more painfully exciting the ceremony, the more eager her desire to catch a glimpse of the next victim. Convents, prisons, schools, theatres, mines, factories, nothing that can be "seen," in traveller's phrase, is too dull or too old, too quiet or too public for her. When she has nothing else to do, she can visit, again and again, the few ruinous old public buildings which form the stock sights of foreign street-loungers in Mexico. But any thing like a funcion, as the Spaniards call it, is irresistible. She goes with equal delight to gambling fêtes, cock-fights, and bull-fights, to moralize, and have a peep at the dresses. As to the last, indeed, her confession is of the frankest:-"Though at first I covered my face, and could not look, little by little I grew so much interested in the scene that I could not take my eyes off it, and I can easily understand the pleasure taken in these barbarous diversions by those accustomed to them from childhood." Nor are we at last at all surprised in having to accompany her, admission having been procured" by certain means, private but powerful," to the desugravios or nightly penance in the church of Saint Augustina grand disciplining match in the dark, performed by a hundred and fifty gentlemen penitents; concluding the evening's entertainments at "the house of the minis ter, where there was a reunion, and where I found the company comfortably engaged in eating a very famous kind of German salad, composed of herrings, smoked salmon, cold potatoes, and apples, and drinking hot punch." The vividness of this clever writer's coloring has brought her, we find, under the suspicions of those sapient critics who make a point of disbelieving wonderful stories about countries of which they know nothing. Some have gone so far as to pronounce her work altogether an article of fictitious manufacture-Paris-made, we believe. A more genuine book, in air as well as reality, it would be difficult to find. True, there is a love of romance about her, which runs into the superlative on most occasions; and probably her best stories, and finest descriptions, are precisely those which require the greatest allowances on the part of the sober-minded reader; but never yet were travels worth reading, the author of which had not some propensity towards the exercise of the traveller's privilege. We must confess, for our own parts, to a great predisposition to what may be called romance, in all matters that relate to this strange portion of the earth-rich in the wonders of nature, and with a history unlike all others. All which attracts and astonishes in other regions, seems combined in one grand theatre in the Mexican isthmus. Humboldt, the most imaginative of travellers, was the first who caught the peculiar enchantment of the place, and tinged his descriptions with the coloring of his own enthusiastic turn for recondite speculations, historical and scientific. Scarcely a day's journey can be taken without some striking change, such as in other parts of the world one must traverse oceans to experience. There are the high table-lands, with a sky ever pure, bright, and keen, almost to the extreme, and "so blue as almost to dazzle the eyes even in the moonlight"-abounding in every production of European industry, strangely mingled with some of the hardier forms of tropical vegetation; a land where every deserted garden is overrun with fruit-trees and flowers, imported by the Spaniards in other days, and now mingling with the weeds of the soil. You travel a few hours, ascend and descend over a rugged chain clad with pine and oak, and embellished with "crosses" to denote the blood that has been shed in its solitudes; or across a tract of glassy glades, a natural park, with clumps of trees, in which the deer dwell unmolested; or a black burnt field of ferruginous lava; and find yourself in some rich valley, amidst chirimoyas, bananas, and granadillas, the fields smiling with magnificent crops of sugar and coffee-you are in the temperate zone, "tierra templada." Another step, and you are in an Arabian desert-a level region of sand and palm groves. You rise again, and are speedily amongst the clouds, in the vast mother-chain of porphyry and trachite, the "sierra madre" which intersects the land; miners' huts, villages, and cities, perched on the mountain sides, amidst ravines and waterfalls, or embo somed in leagues on leagues of waving pine red ruby, would perch upon the trees. We forests, pulled boquets of orange-blossom, jasmine, lilies, dark-red roses, and lemon leaves, and wished "That fluctuate when the storms of Eldorado we could have transported them to you, to those sound;" lands where winter is now wrapping the world in his white winding-sheet. while everywhere, for hundreds of miles, "The gardener or coffee-planter--such a garthe snowy cones of the three great volca- dener !-Don Juan by name, with an immense noes, shining at sunset above the violet, black beard, Mexican hat, and military sash of gold, and purple tints which color the low-crimson silk, came to offer us some orangeade; er ridges, seem as the landmarks of all the choicest and most beautiful districts: for if you wish to live in the Indies, says the Spanish proverb, let it be in sight of the volcanoes: "Si a morar en Indias quieres, Que sea donde los volcanos veyres." Over all this variegated country are scattered the remnants of an ancient and mys. terious civilization, together with the fast decaying monuments of a second. The massive churches, convents, and palaces of the Spanish conquerors are crumbling away, and bid fair, in a few years, to form a recent stratum of historical ruins: while the phantoms of the silent, grave-eyed princes of the soil, and those of the long descended Dons who succeeded them, are vanishing alike into the dominions of the past; and the countrymen of Montezuma are not more reduced to the condition of subjects and strangers in their own land than those of Cortes "The Alexander of the Western zone, Who won the world young Ammon mourn'd unknown." Madame Calderon has not only a very proper tourist's enthusiasm for the picturesque, but, what is much better, that intense, real enjoyment of natural beauty, and rural sights and sounds, which is so often found strongest in those who enter with the greatest spirit into the enjoyments of city life. She finds amusement in the quietest orchards and coffee plantations, no less than in the dullest of Mexican tertulias. "This morning, after a refreshing sleep, we rose and dressed at eight o'clock-late hours for tierra caliente-and then went out to the coffee plantation and orange walk. Any thing so lovely! The orange trees were covered with their golden fruit and fragrant blossom; the forest-trees, bending over, formed a natural arch, which the sun could not pierce. We laid ourselves down on the soft grass, contrasting this day with the preceding. The air was soft and balmy, and actually heavy with the fragrance of the orange-blossom and starry jasmine. All around the orchard ran streams of the most delicious clear waters, trickling with sweet music, and now and then a little cardinal, like a bright and having sent to the house for sugar and tumblers, pulled the oranges from the trees, and drew the water from a clear tank overshadowed by blossoming branches, and cold as though it had been iced. There certainly is no tree more beautiful than the orange, with its golden fruit, shining green leaves, and lovely white blossom with so delicious a fragrance. We felt this morning as if Atlacamulco was an earthly paradise. But when the moon rose sefragrant with orange-blossom, blew gently over renely and without a cloud, and a soft breeze, the trees, I felt as if we could have rode on for ever, without fatigue, and in a state of the most perfect enjoyment. It was hard to say whether the first soft breath of morning, or the languishing and yet more fragrant airs of evening, are more enchanting."-(p. 245-251.) can "Auburn," not the less pleasing by the Or take the following picture of a Mexisly contrast with scenery with which the authoress is more familiar : - "Travelling in New-England, we arrive at a small and flourishing village. We see four new churches proclaiming different sects; religion suited to all customers. These wooden churches or meeting-houses are all new, all painted white, or perhaps a bright red. Hard by is a tavern with a green paling, as clean and as new as the churches; and there are also various smart stores and neat dwelling-houses-all new, all wooden, all clean, and all ornamented with slight Grecian pillars. The whole has churches, stores, and taverns, are all of a piece. a cheerful, trim, and flourishing aspect. Houses, They are suited to the present emergency, whatever that may be, though they will never make fine ruins. Every thing proclaims prosperity, equality, consistency;-the past forgotten, the present all in all, and the future taking care of itself. No delicate attentions to posterity, who can never pay its debts; no beggars. If a man has even a hole in his coat, he must be lately from the Emerald Isle. "Transport yourself, in imagination, from this New-England village to it matters not which, not far from Mexico. 'Look on this picture and on that.' The Indian huts with their half-naked inmates, and little gardens full of flowers--the huts themselves either built of clay, or the half ruined beaux restes of some stone building. At a little distance a hacienda, like a deserted palace, built of solid masonry, with its inner patio surrounded by thick stone pillars, with great walls and iron-barred windows that might stand a siege. Here, a ruined arch and cross, so solidly built that one cannot but wonder how the stones are crumbled away. There, rising in the midst of old, faithful-looking trees.] in that ungenial region; the schism in the the church, gray and ancient, but strong as if designed for eternity, with its saints and virgins, and martyrs and relics, its gold, and silver, and precious stones, whose value would buy up all the spare lots in the New-England village; the lepero, with scarcely a rag to cover him, kneeling on that marble pavement. Leaving the enclosure of the church, observe the stone wall that bounds the road for more than a mile the fruit-trees overtopping it, high though it be, with their loaded branches. This is the convent city as to whether the fair ambassadress should, or should not, wear the dress of a Poblana peasant at the great fancy ball, and her own horror at discovering that the Poblana costume, à la rigueur, consisted of very short petticoats, and no stockings; together with a thousand other matters with which no one but an ambassadress, with eyes and ears awake to every thing about her, could possibly have brought us acquainted. orchard. And that great Gothic pile of building that stands in hoary majesty, surmounted by the lofty mountains, whose cloud-enveloped When Humboldt visited Mexico, forty summits, tinged by the evening sun, rise behind years ago, the wealth of the great landed it--what could so noble a building be but the proprietors had attained its maximum. The monastery, perhaps of the Carmelites, because extraordinary success of mining advenof its exceeding rich garden and well-chosen site; for they, of all monks, are richest in this tures, which had gone on flourishing with world's goods? Also, we may see the reverend scarcely any interruption for nearly a cenold prior riding slowly from under the arched tury, had stimulated the cultivation of the gate up the village lanes, the Indians coming soil; and, from the comparatively low price from their huts to do him lowly reverence as he of labor, immense fortunes were realized passes. Here every thing reminds us of the by landlords and capitalists. There were past; of the conquering Spaniards, who seemed individuals who derived £40,000 a-year to build for eternity, impressing each work with from land alone, without mines. The Count their own solid, grave, and religious character; of the triumph of Catholicism; and of the In- of Valenciana had received in some years dians, when first Cortes startled them from their £240,000 from the single mine of Valenrepose, and stood before them like the fulfilment ciana; the landed property of his family, of a half forgotten prophecy. It is the present independently of that mine, being estimated that seems like a dream, a pale reflection of the at six millions sterling. Their extravapast. All is decaying and growing fainter, and men seem trusting to some unknown future gance was as prodigious as their fortunes; which they may never see. One government has been abandoned, and there is none in its place; one revolution follows another, yet the remedy is not found. Let them beware, lest, half a century later, they be awakened from their delusion, and find the cathedral turned into a meeting-house, and all painted white; the railing melted down; the silver transformed into dollars; the Virgin's jewels sold to the highest bidder; the floor washed, (which would do it no harm,) and round the whole a nice new wooden paling, freshly done in green; and all this performed by some of the artists from the wide-awake republic further north." though its wildest excesses were often distinguished by that vein of hyperbolical grandeur which runs through the Spanish character. The Count de Regla of former days" was so wealthy," says Madame Calderon, that when his son, the present Count, was christened, the whole party walked from his house to the church upon ingots of silver. The Countess having quarrelled with the Vice-Queen, sent her, in token of reconciliation, a white satin slipper, entirely covered with large diamonds. The Count invited the King of Spain to visit his Mexican territories, assuring him that the hoofs of his majesty's horse should touch nothing but solid silver from Vera Cruz to the capital. This might be a bravado; but a more certain proof of his wealth exists in the fact that he caused two ships of the line, of the largest size, to be constructed in Havana, at his expense, made of mahogany and cedar, and presented them to the king." This was the nobleman whose daughter-in-law, la Guera Rodriguez, was said to have seduced even the philosophic Humboldt into a flirtation; and lived to be Madame Calderon's intimate associate, and her general vouchee for all extraordinary narratives. But although such passages as these abound, we still prefer the lady in her less sentimental moods. There is little enough of romance in actual Mexican society, and her insight into it was of that minute character which leaves nothing to the imagination. We enter more heartily into the distresses and embarrassments into which she was thrown, by the utter novelty of the ways of the people among whom she became domiciled;-the riddles of Mexican etiquette, the horrors of Mexican cookery, and miseries of Mexican servants; the daily terrors, amounting just to a pleasant excitement, of robbers and revolutions; the vicissitudes of an attempt to set up Now, the history of the last thirty years weekly soirées, with music and flirtation, in Mexico has been that of incessant re volutions and disturbances, beating with commodities since emancipation. Madame violence against the enormous mass of this Calderon's account of the extravagant prohereditary property, without, as yet, suc- fusion of the Mexican ladies in jewelry, ceeding in breaking it down. The landed has been cited by some of her wise readers gentry of Mexico are, of course, very much as incredible. She certainly surprises us poorer than their grandfathers. They a little now and then-especially when she have suffered by proscriptions, conscrip- speaks of the great displays of this kind tions, and vexations of every kind: the ex- among women of the inferior classes, and pulsion of their intelligent Spanish super- in the country, where highway_robberies intendents and managers-the repeated are every day's entertainment. But, generavage of their estates-the decimation rally speaking, it is very natural that this of their Indian laborers by war. They relic of the profuse and luxurious habits of have shared, too, in their own proportion, wealthier days should have remained; bein the terrible depression of mining pro- cause there is no movable wealth which perty, which is probably more owing to can be more easily concealed and preservone cause-the high price at which quick- ed in dangerous times. As to the precious silver is now maintained in Europe by cer- metals, every one knows, that in the more tain monopolies kept up for state purposes inaccessible parts of Mexico, and still more -than to all the internal misfortunes of in Peru, they were at one time more comthe country put together. Still, they ex- mon than their plated substitutes are among ist; and, what is more, they are at the ourselves. Sir William Temple speaks of head of parties. Whichever side wins in a small town in Peru, where the principal the eternal revolutions of the country, is families rejoiced in watering-troughs of pretty sure to count a good proportion of pure silver in their courtyards; and we rethe lords of the soil among its leaders. collect a consignment, some years ago, to Santa Anna, we believe, is very rich. We a London merchant, of a lot of cavalry helhave been informed that Bustamente, the mets of the same article, which a defeated late President, held eighteen of the large squadron had thrown off in running away, grants into which the soil of Mexico was in order to delay their pursuers. formerly divided, each containing 22,000 With these outward relics of aristocracy, acres. No agrarian party has, as yet, risen Mexico still preserves much of the stately up in Mexico, as far as we are aware. courtesy and etiquette of the old Spanish There is a great dislike among the rulers style-exaggerated, as all such qualities to any thing like tampering with the insti- are in colonies. It preserves, too, espetutions of property. We have heard that cially in the capital and larger cities, what Santa Anna has lately put down a News- is much better, a true social spirit-the paper, conducted on very moderate prin- spirit of mutual good-humor and kindliness. ciples, for merely suggesting that the agri-It is pleasing to turn from the reckless culture of the country would gain by the abuse with which the Mexican character is subdivision of the large haciendas. Confis- treated by travellers in general, to the tescation seems to have been a measure rarely timony of one who had learned to know it resorted to, even in the worst times, and well. "In point of amiability and warmth by the most ferocious party leaders; who of manner," says Madame Calderon, "I made a point of shooting their opponents have met with no women who can poswherever they could catch them. Now, sibly compete with those in Mexico; and indeed, revolutions have become matters it appears to me that women of all other of such everyday occurrence, that they countries will appear cold and stiff by comseem to be prosecuted with much less ani-parison." This is an assertion which she mosity than a parliamentary struggle in frequently repeats. Nor does she speak England; and there is something ludicrous in Madame Calderon's account of the general congratulations and embracings which followed the two cannonadings to which she was an eye-witness. There is, therefore, still great private wealth, the remnant of old accumulations in Mexico; not to mention that in portions of the Republic, where the evils of these disturbances have been least oppressively felt, industry has received a considerable stimulus from the cheapness of foreign less favorably of the national disposition in many other more important respects, however serious the counterbalancing vices may be. These are things which most travellers are altogether unable to judge of, particularly English and American. They can see the indolence and ignorance, the tokens of murder and robbery, the besetting sins of the people, easily enough; they cannot discover, nor appreciate if they could, the peculiar savoir vivre of the Spanish race, and the graces which attend |