Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, Number 371, September 1846

by Various

MEXICO, ITS TERRITORY AND PEOPLE.

Man must be content to follow the steps of Providence tardily, timidly, and uncertainly; but he can have no pursuit more worthy of his genius, his wisdom, or his virtue. Why one half of the globe remained hidden from the other during the four or five thousand years after its creation, is among the questions which we may long ask without obtaining an answer. Why the treasures, the plants, and the animals of America should have been utterly unknown, alike to the adventurous expeditions of Tyre and Sidon, to the nautical skill of the Carthaginian, to the brilliant curiosity of the Greek, and to the imperial ambition of the Roman; while their discovery was reserved for a Genoese sailor in the fifteenth century, is a problem perhaps inaccessible of solution by any human insight into the ways of the Great Disposer of all things. Yet may it not be conjectured that the knowledge was expressly withheld until it could be of practical use to mankind; that if America had been discovered a thousand years before, it would have been found only a vast wilderness in both its southern and northern divisions, for it was then almost wholly unpeopled; that with the chief interest of imperial Rome turned to European possession or Eastern conquest, the discovery would have been nearly thrown away; that there was hitherto no superflux of European population to pour into this magnificent desert; and that even if Roman adventure had dared the terrors of the ocean, and the perils of new climates, at an almost interminable distance from home, the massacres and plunders habitual to heathen conquest must have impeded, if not wholly broken up, the progress of the feeble population already settling on the soil; or perhaps trained that population to habits of ferocity like their own, and turned a peaceful and pastoral land into a scene of slaughter and misery?

The discovery of the American Continent flashed on the world like the discovery of a new Creation. In reading the correspondence of the learned at the time, the return of Columbus, and the knowledge which that return brought, is spoken of with a rapture of language more resembling an Arabian tale than the narrative of the most adventurous voyage of man. The primitive races of their fellow-beings, living in the simplicity of nature, under forests of the palm, with all delicious fruits for their food, with gold and pearls for their toys, and the rich treasures of new plants and animals of all species for their indulgence and their use, were described with the astonishment and delight of a dream of Fairy-land, or the still richer visions of restored Paradise.

Yet, when the hues of imagination grew colourless by time, the continents of the West displayed to the ripened knowledge of Europe virtues only still more substantial. The contrast between the northern and southern portions of the New World is of the most striking kind. It is scarcely less marked than the distinction between the broken, deeply-divided, and well-watered surface of Europe, and the broad plains, vast mountain ranges, and few, but mighty rivers, which form the characteristic features of Asia. In North America, we see a land of singularly varied surface, in its primitive state, covered with forest; with an uncertain climate; a soil seldom luxuriant, often sterile, every where requiring, and generally rewarding human industry; watered by many rivers, penetrated in almost every direction by navigable streams, and traversed from north to south, an unusual direction for rivers, by an immense stream, the Mississippi, bringing down the furs, the produce of the north, the corn of the temperate zone, the fruits of the tropics, and connecting all those regions with the commerce of Europe: a natural canal, of more than two thousand miles, without a perceptible difference of breadth, from New Orleans to the falls of St Anthony. The Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio, noble rivers, traverse the land in a variety of directions, with courses of from fifteen hundred to two thousand miles; and to the north of the United States, a chain of vast inland seas, a succession of Mediterraneans, surrounded by productive provinces, rapidly filling with a busy population.

The southern portion of the New World exhibits the plains of Tartary, the solitary mountain range of India, the fertility of the Asiatic soil. It, too, has its Ganges and its Indus, in the Amazon and the Rio de la Plata; but its smaller streams are few and feeble. It has the fiery heat of India, the dangerous exhalations of the jungle, the tiger and the lion, though of a less daring and powerful species; and the native, dark, delicate, timid, and indolent, as the Hindoo.

Without speaking of the contrast as perfectly sustained in all its points, it is unquestionable that North and South America have been formed for two great families of humankind as distinct as energy and ease; that the North is to be possessed only as the conquest of toil, while the South allows of the languor into whose hand the fruit drops from the tree.

May it not also be rationally conjectured, that in the discovery Europe and America were equally the objects of the Providential benevolence? It was palpably the Divine will to give Europe a new and powerful advance in the fifteenth century. Printing, gunpowder, and the mariner’s compass, were its gifts to Europe; to be followed and consummated in that new impulse at once to religious truth and to social improvement, which so soon transpired in the German Reformation, and in the commercial system of England and the continental nations. The extension of this mighty impulse to America rapidly followed. The first English colony was planted in North America in the reign of Elizabeth, the great protectress of Protestantism; and the first authentic knowledge of South America was brought to Europe by the discoveries of Englishmen, following the route of Columbus, and going beyond him. It is true that the intercourse of the South with the energetic qualities and free principles of Europe was impeded by an influence which, from its first being, has been hostile to the free progress of the human mind. The Popedom threw its shadow over Spanish America, and the great experiment of civilisation was comparatively thrown away wherever the priest of Rome was paramount. The land, too, witnessed a succession of slaughters, and the still more fearful trade in the unfortunate natives of Africa. But the most powerful contrast was furnished to mankind in the rapid growth of the Protestant states of the north, in their increasing commerce, in the vigour of their laws, in the activity of the public mind, and the ascent of their scattered and feeble communities into the rank and the enjoyments of a great nation.

Nor are we to speak of South America as having wholly slept during the period since its discovery. If all the larger faculties which give nations a place in history remained in a state of collapse under the pressure of Spain, society had made a forward step in every province of that great territory. The inhabitants had never relapsed into their primitive barbarism; they had laws, commerce, manufactures, and literature, all in a ruder degree than as developed under the vivid activity of Europe, but all raising the provinces into a gradual capacity of social vigour, of popular civilisation, and perhaps even of that pure religion without which national power is only national evil. Perhaps the cloud which has rested for so many ages over the moral soil of South America, may have been suffered to remain until the soil itself acquired strength for a larger product under a more industrious generation. It is not improbable that as the gold and silver of the South were evidently developed, in the fifteenth century, to supply the new commercial impulse of that time of European advance, the still more copious, and still more important, agricultural wealth of countries overflowing with unused exuberance—the magnificent tropical fertility of the continents beyond the ocean—may have been reserved to increase the opulence and stimulate the ardour of a period which the Steam-boat and the Railway have marked for a mighty change in the earth; and in which they may be only the first fruits of scientific skill, the promises of inventions still more powerful, the heralds of a general progress of mankind, to whose colossal strides all the past is feeble, unpurposed, and ineffectual.

The invasion of the Mexican territory by the army of the United States has naturally attracted the eyes of Europe; and whether the war shall issue in a total conquest or in a hollow peace, its results must strongly affect the future condition of the country. Mexico must at once take the bold attitude of an empire, or must be dis-severed, province by province, until its very name is no more. But no country of the western world has a position more fitted for empire. Washed on the east by the gulf which bears its name, and on the west by the Pacific, it thus possesses direct access to two oceans, and by them to the most opulent regions of the globe. On the south it can dread no rival in the struggling state of Guatemala. But the north is the true frontier on which the battle of its existence is to be fought, if fought at all, for beyond that barrier stretch the United States. The extent of its territory startles European conceptions, extending in north latitude from fifteen to forty-two degrees, and in west longitude from eighty-seven to one hundred and twenty-five degrees. Its surface, on a general calculation, contains about a million and a half of square miles, or about seven times the dimensions of France. Yet, though thus approaching the equator, the climate of Mexico is in general highly favourable to life and to the products of the temperate zone: the incomparably larger portion of its surface being a succession of table-lands or elevated plains, where, with the sun of the tropics blazing almost vertically, the evenings are refreshingly cool, the breeze is felt from the mountains or the ocean, and the days are scarcely hotter than those of Europe.

We now glance at the principal features of the great territory.

Vera Cruz, its chief commercial city, and medium of intercourse with Europe, is handsomely built, exhibiting the usual signs of commercial wealth, in the stateliness of its private houses, and in the rarer peculiarity of wide and cleanly streets. But when did commerce build with any other consideration than that of trade? Vera Cruz is proverbially unhealthy; a range of swamps in the vicinity loads the summer air with fatal exhalations; and the Vomito, the name for a rapid disease, evidently akin to the fearful Black-vomit of Africa, requires either the most vigilant precaution, or more probably the most fortunate chance, to escape its immediate seizure of the frame. Yet it is said that this disease seldom attacks the natives of the city.

But the general susceptibility of the European frame to tropical disease, is tried here in almost every shape of suffering; and typhus, yellow fever, and almost pestilence, terribly thin the concourse of the stranger.

Yet such is the courage of money-making in all parts of the world, that climate is regarded as only a bugbear. The trader in Vera Cruz enters on the campaign against “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” as if he had a patent for life. The streets, in the trading season, exhibit perpetual crowds; the harbour is full of masts, nestling under the protection of St Juan d’Ulloa from the bursts of wind which sometimes come with terrible violence from the north; and the funeral and the festivity go on together, and without much impeding each other, in a land which for the time exhibits the very Festino, or fête of the Merchant, the Sailor, and the Creole.

But, when this season ends, Vera Cruz is as sad as a dungeon, as silent as a monastery, and as sickly as an hospital. The señoras, a race of perfectly Spanish-visaged, black-eyed, and very coquettish beauties, sit all day drooping in their balconies, like doves upon the housetops, perhaps longing for a hurricane, an earthquake, or any thing which may break up the monotony of their existence. The sound of a guitar, a passing footstep, nay, the whine of a beggar, sets a whole street in motion, and there is a general rustling of mantillas, and a general rush to the windows. The men bear their calamity better; the señor, when he has once a cigar between his sallow lips, has made up his mind for the day. Whether he stands in the sunshine or sits in the shade—whether he wakes or sleeps, the cigar serves him for all the exercise of his animal functions. His brain is as much enveloped in smoke as his moustaches; his cares vanish like the smoke itself. It is not until his cigar-box is empty, that he reverts to the consciousness of his being an inhabitant of this world of ours.

But some are of a more aspiring disposition. They now and then glance round upon the noble landscape which encircles their city. But they do this with the most dexterous determination not to move a limb. Their houses are flat-roofed; some of them have little glazed chambers on the roofs; and there they sit with the sky above them, the mountains round them, and the sea beneath them, dreaming away like so many dormice. One of their American describers compares the whole well-bred population to a colony of beavers; but, we presume, without the industry of the quadruped. Their still closer resemblance would be to a wax-work collection on a large scale, where tinsel petticoats, woollen wigs, and bugle eyes imitate humanity, and every thing is before the spectator but life.

Jonathan, who thinks himself born to lay hold on every scrap of the globe by which he can turn one cent into two, looks, of course, on the whole shore of the gulf—towns, mines, and mountains—as his own. He frees himself from all scruples on the subject by the obvious convenience of the conception.

“No spot of the earth,” says one of those neighbourly persons, “will be more desirable than the soil of Mexico for a residence, whenever it is in possession of our race, with the government and laws which they carry with them wherever they go. The march of time is not more certain than that this will be, and probably at no distant day.”

And, on this showing, the man of “government and laws” proceeds to “sink, burn, and destroy,” in the “great cause of humanity,” edifies the native by grapeshot, and polishes him with the cutlass. In those exploits of a “free and enlightened” people, our only surprise is that diplomacy itself takes the trouble of offering any apology whatever. The comparative powers of resistance and attack settle the conscience of the affair in a word. The seizure is easy, and therefore why should it not be made? The riflemen of Kentucky and the hunters of Virginia, the squatters of Ohio and the sympathizers of Massachusets, all see the affair in the proper light; and why should the philosopher or the philanthropist, the man of justice or the man of religion, be listened to on subjects so much more easily settled by the rattle of twelve-pounders? The right of making war on Mexico has not yet found a single defender but in the streets; not a single ground of defence but in the roar of the rabble; not a single plea but in the convenience of the possession. Even the American journals have given up their old half-savage rant of universal conquest. Every drop of blood shed in a war of aggression is sure to be avenged.

The present town is not the town of Cortes. His “Villa Rica de Vera Cruz” (The Rich City of the True Cross) was seated six miles further inland. But trade decided against the choice of the great soldier. The pen, in this instance, conquered the sword a century before the conflict began in Europe. The population of the old city slipped away to the new and hasty hovels on the shore; and the ground consecrated by the banner of the Spanish hero was left to the donkey and the thistle.

The visible protector of the city and harbour (it has saints innumerable) is the island of St Juan de Ulloa, lying within 600 yards of the mole; and on which stands the well-known fortress. Ships, of course, pass immediately under its guns; and it is regarded as the most powerful fortress in Mexico, or perhaps in the New World, being now thoroughly armed. This is a different state of things from the condition in which it was found by the French squadron in 1839. The ramparts were then scarcely mounted, the guns were more dangerous to the garrison than to the enemy, and of regular artillerists there were few or none; engineers were unheard of. The French naturally did as they pleased; achieved a magnanimous triumph over bare walls, and plucked a laurel for the Prince de Joinville from the most barren of all possible soils of victory; but it served for a bulletin. They would probably now find another kind of reception, for the ramparts have guns, and the guns have artillerymen.

The aspect of the Mexican coast from the sea is singularly bold. On the north and west the waters of the Gulf wash a level shore; but on the south all is a crescent of mountains, rising to a general height of 12,000 feet above the level of the sea; but the noblest object is the snow-capped pinnacle of Orizaba, rising, according to Humboldt, 17,400 feet, and covered with perpetual snow from the height of 15,092. This is a volcanic mountain, but which has slept since the middle of the sixteenth century; what must have been its magnificence when its summit was covered with flame!

The mode of conveyance between Vera Cruz and Mexico is chiefly by an establishment of stage-coaches, making three journeys a-week between the capitals. Those vehicles, originally established by an American of the United States, are now the property of a Mexican whom they are rapidly making rich. The horses are Mexican, and, though small, are strong and spirited. The stage leaves Vera Cruz at eleven at night, and arrives about three o’clock in the next afternoon at Jalapa, a distance of about seventy miles, and a continual ascent through mountains. The houses on the wayside are few and wretched, constructed of canes ten feet long, fixed in the ground, and covered with palm-tree leaves. The villages strongly resemble those of the American Indians; hovels ten or twelve feet square, with a small patch of ground for Chillies and Indian corn—the only difference of those original styles of architecture being, that the northern builds with logs, the southern with mud in the shape of bricks.

A large portion of the country between those two towns belonged to the well-known General Santa Anna. The soil of his vast estate is fertile, but left to its natural fertility—the General being a shepherd, and said to have from forty to fifty thousand head of cattle in his pastures. He also acts the farmer, and takes in cattle to graze. His demand is certainly not high; and Yorkshire will be astonished to hear that he feeds them at forty dollars the hundred.

The ascent of the mountain range, and the varieties of the road, naturally keep the traveller on the qui vive. With the air singularly transparent, with the brightest of skies above, and the most varied of southern landscapes stretching to an unlimited extent below, the eye finds a continual feast. The city of Jalapa stands on the slope, throned on a shelf of the mountain 4000 feet above the sea, and with 4000 feet of the bold and sunny range above it. The whole horizon, except in the direction of Vera Cruz, is a circle of mountains, and towering above them all, at a distance of twenty-five miles, (which, from the clearness of the air, seems scarcely the fourth part of the distance,) rises the splendid cone of Orizaba. On the summit of the range stands Perote, a town connected with a strong fortress, perhaps the highest in position that the world exhibits—8500 feet above the shore.

Height makes the difference between heat and cold every where. In the middle of a summer which burns the blood in the human frame at Vera Cruz, men in Perote button their coats to the chin, and sleep in blankets. Thus winter is brought from the Poles to the Tropic, and the Mexican shivers under the most fiery sunshine of the globe.

The next stage is Puebla—eighty miles; the road passes over a vast plain generally without a sign of cultivation, as generally destitute of inhabitants, and with scarcely a tree, and scarcely a stream. It is difficult to know to what purpose this huge prairie can be turned, except to a field of battle. As the road approaches Puebla, there are farms erected by the town, and from which its wants are chiefly supplied. They produce wheat, barley, and Indian corn. The only fodder for horses is wheaten straw, but on this they contrive to “grow fat;” we are not called on to account for the phenomenon.

But every nation loves to intoxicate itself, and the Mexican boasts of the most nauseous invention for the purpose among the discoveries of man. Pulque, the national beverage, is the juice of the Agave Americana, fermented. The original process by which the fermentation is produced is one which we shall not venture to detail; but the liquor obtained from the section of the plant is drawn up by a rude syphon, and poured into dressed ox-hides. The taste is mawkish, and the smell is noisome. Yet, to the Mexican, it is nectar and ambrosia together. Pulque is to him meat, drink, and clothing, for without it the world has no pleasures. The most remarkable circumstance is, that it is without strength. Thus it wants the charm of brandy, which may madden, but which at least warms; or aquafortis, which the Pole and the Russ are said to drink as a qualifier of their excesses in train oil; but the Mexican would rather die, or even fight, than dispense with his pulque; and if Santa Anna had but put his warriors on short allowance of the national liquor before his last battle, and promised them double allowance after it, he would probably have been, at this moment, on the Mexican throne.

The Agave, called by the natives Maguey, is certainly an extraordinary instance of succulency, and an unrivalled acquisition to a thirsty population. A single plant of the Agave has been known to supply one hundred and fifty gallons of this sap. In good land it grows to an enormous size, the centre stem often thirty feet high, and twelve or fifteen inches in diameter at the bottom. When the plant is in flower, which occurs from seven to fifteen years old, the centre stem is cut off at the bottom, and the juice is collected.

Humbolt says, that a single plant will yield four hundred and fifty-two cubic inches of liquor in twenty-four hours, for four or five months, which would give upwards of four hundred gallons. How curious are the distributions of nature! All this profuse efflux of mawkish fluid would be thrown away in any other country. But nature has given the Mexican a palate for its enjoyment, and to him the draught is rapture.

Mexico is the land for the lovers of pumice-stone. The whole road from Vera Cruz to the capital is covered with remnants of lava. Every plain seems to have been burnt up by eruptions a thousand years old, or, according to the time-table of the geologist, from ten to ten thousand millions of years ago. With the mountain tops all on fire, and the plains waving with an inundation of flame, Mexico must have been a splendid, though rather an inconvenient residence, in the “olden time.”

Mexican agriculture has not yet attained the invention of an iron ploughshare; its substitute is primitive, and wooden. It evidently dates as far back as the times of the Dispersion. Nor, with thousands and tens of thousands of horses, have they yet discovered that a horse may be yoked to a plough. The Turks say, that the plague exists only where Mahometanism is the religion, and they seem to regard the distinction as a peculiar favour of Providence. It has been said by, or for, the Spaniards of the present day, that no railroad exists, nor, we presume, can exist, “where the Spanish language is spoken.” The late abortive attempts to make a railway from Bayonne to Madrid, so far prove the incompatibility of railways with the tongue of the Peninsula. A little effort of human presumption in Cuba, has been ventured on, in the shape of a brief railway, which already goes, as we are informed, at the rate of some half-dozen miles an hour. But as this is a dangerous speed to a Spaniard, we naturally suppose that the enterprise will be abandoned. But though the majority of the population, between drinking pulque and smoking cigars, find their hands completely full, one class is at least sufficiently active. Robbers in Mexico are what pedlars used to be in England; they keep up the life of the villages, plunder wherever they can, cheat where they cannot plunder, ride stout horses, and lead, on the whole, a varied, and sometimes a very gay life. One of the American travellers saw, at one of the villages where the stage changed horses, a dashing and picturesque figure, gaudily dressed, who rode by on a handsome horse richly caparisoned. On inquiring if the coachman knew him, the answer was, that he knew him perfectly well, and that he was the captain of a band of robbers, who had plundered the stage several times since the whip and reins had been in his hands. On the Americans urging the question, why he had not brought the robber to punishment, the answer was, “that he would be sure to be shot by some of the band the next time he passed the road;” the honour of Mexican thieves being peculiarly nice upon this point. It appeared that the dashing horseman had gone through the village on a reconnaissance, but probably not liking the obvious preparations of the travellers, had postponed the caption.

The mode of managing things in this somnolent country, is remarkable for its tranquillity. The American who narrates the circumstance, had taken with him from Vera Cruz four dragoons; but on accidentally enquiring on the road into the state of their arms, he found that but one carabine had a lock in fighting order, and even that one was not loaded; on which he dismissed the guard, and trusted to his companions, who were all well armed. The Mexican travellers, taking the matter in another way, never carry arms, but prepare a small purse “to be robbed of,” of which they are robbed accordingly. A few miles from Perote, the road winds round a high hill, and the passengers generally get out and walk. The Americans on this occasion had left their arms in the carriage, but their more prudent chief immediately ordered them to carry them in their hands, and in the course of the ascent, they pounced upon a group of ruffians whom the driver pronounced to be robbers; and who, but for their arms, would probably have attacked them. In less than a month after this, five or six Americans having left their arms in the stage at this spot, were attacked, and stript of every cent belonging to them.

It must be owned that this country has fine advantages for the gentlemen of the road. The highway between Vera Cruz and Mexico is the great conduit of life in the country. Nearly all the commerce goes by that way, and ninety out of every hundred travellers pass by the same route. The chief portion of the road is through an absolute desert. It frequently winds up the sides of mountains, and then is bordered by forests of evergreens, forming a capital shelter for the land pirate, the whole being a combination of Hounslow Heath and Shooter’s Hill on a grand scale, and making highway robbery not merely a showy but a safe speculation, the gaming-table being the chief recruiting-office of the whole battalion of Mercury.

The statistics of gaming might borrow a chapter from Mexico. The passion for play is public, universal, and unbounded. It is probably superior even to the passion for pulque. Every one plays, and plays for all that he is worth in the world, and often for more. But he has his resource—the road. A man who has lost his last dollar, but who is determined to play on till he dies, lays himself under strong temptations of coveting his neighbour’s goods. The hour when the stages pass is known to every one; the points of the road where they must go slowly up the hill, are familiar to all highway recollections. Associates are expeditiously found among the loiterers, who, after their own ruin, sit round the room watching the luck of others. The band is formed in a moment; they take the road without delay, post themselves in the evergreens, enjoy the finest imaginable prospect, and breathe the most refreshing air, until the creaking of the coach-wheels puts them on the alert. They then exhibit their weapons, the passengers produce their little purses, the stage is robbed of every thing portable, or convertible into cash, the band return to the gaming-table, fling out their coin, and play till they are either rich or ruined once more.

Some time after an adventure, such as we have described, the stage was robbed near Puebla by a gang, all of whom had the appearance of gentlemen. When the operation of rifling every body and every thing was completed, one of the robbers observed—“that they must not be looked on as professional thieves, for they were gentlemen; but having been unfortunate at play, they were forced to put the company to this inconvenience, for which they requested their particular pardon.”

An incident of this order occurring in the instance of a public personage, some years before, long excited remarkable interest. The Swiss consul had been assassinated at noonday. A carriage had driven up to his door, out of which three men came, one in the dress of a priest. On the doors being opened they seized and gagged the porter, rushed into the apartment where the consul was sitting, murdered and robbed him, and then retreated. None knew whence they came or whither they went; but the murdered man, in his dying struggle, had torn a button off the coat of one of the robbers, which they found still clenched in his hand. A soldier was shortly after seen with more money than he could account for; suspicion naturally fell upon him; his quarters were searched, and one of his coats was found with the button torn off. He was convicted, but relied upon a pardon through the Colonel Yanez, chief aide-de-camp of the president Santa Anna, who was his accomplice in the transaction. On being brought out for execution, and placed on the fatal bench where criminals are strangled, he cried out, “Stop, I will acknowledge my accomplices;” and he pronounced the name of the colonel. Search was immediately made in the house of Yanez, and a letter in cipher was found, connecting him with this and other robberies. This letter was left in the hands of one of the judges: he was offered a large sum to destroy it, and refused. In a few days after he was found dead, as was supposed, by poison. The paper was then transferred to another judge who was offered the same bribe, and who promised to destroy it; but on conferring with his priest, though he took the money, he shrank from the actual destruction of the document and kept it in silence. Yanez was brought to trial, and, believing that the paper was no longer in existence, treated the charge with contempt. The paper was produced, and the aide-de-camp was condemned and executed.

Puebla is one of the handsomest cities in the Mexican territory. The houses are lofty, and in good taste, and the streets are wide and clean About six miles from the city stood Choluta, which Cortes described “as having a population of forty thousand citizens, well clothed,” and as it might appear, peculiarly devout according to their own style, for the conqueror counted in it the towers of four hundred idol temples. Of this city not a vestige remains but an immense mound of brick, on which now stands a Romish chapel.

Beyond Puebla, cultivation extends to a considerable distance on both sides of the road. To the right lies the republic of Tlascala, so memorable in the history of the Spanish conquest, and once crowded with a population of warriors. The road then runs at the foot of Pococatapetl, the highest of the Mexican mountains, seventeen thousand feet above the level of the sea. The capital is now approached; and on passing over the next ridge, the first glimpse is caught of the famous valley and city of Mexico. From this ridge Cortes had the first view of his conquest. It must have been an object of indescribable interest to the great soldier who had fought his way to the possession of the noblest prize of his age. The valley of Mexico, a circuit of seventeen hundred square miles, must then have been a most magnificent sight, if it be true that it contained “forty cities, and villages without number.” Time, war, and the fatal government of Spain, have nearly turned this splendid tract into a desert. But it still has features combining the picturesque with the grand. The valley partially resembles the crater of an immense volcano wholly surrounded by mountains, some of them rising ten thousand feet above the city. In the centre of this vast oval basin is a lake, or rather a chain of lakes, through the midst of which the road now passes for about eighteen miles, on a raised causeway. The city stands in the north-eastern quarter of the valley, not more than three miles from the mountains, at an elevation of seven thousand four hundred and seventy feet, and its position seems obviously made for the capital of an empire.

Mexico is regarded as the “stateliest city” in the New World. Its plan was laid, and the principal portion of its public buildings are said to have been designed, by Cortes. They bear all the impress of a superb mind. The habitual meanness of democratical building has no place there; the majority of the fabrics were evidently constructed by a man to whom the royal architecture of the European nations was familiar, and the finest houses in the city are still inhabited by the descendants of the conqueror.

The principal square is the pride of the Mexicans, and the admiration of travellers. It has an area of twelve acres; unluckily, this fine space, which in England would be covered with verdant turf, shrubs, and flowers, is covered only with pavement. But the buildings are on a noble scale. The Cathedral fills one whole side of the square, the Palace another, and the sites of both are memorable and historical; the Cathedral standing on the ground where once stood the great idol temple, and the Palace on the ground of the palace of Montezuma! The latter building is 500 feet long, and contains the public offices, besides the apartments of the President. The Cathedral is of striking Gothic architecture, and after all the pressures and plunderings of the later period, still retains immense wealth. The high altar is covered with plates of silver, interspersed with ornaments of massive gold. This altar is inclosed with a balustrade a hundred feet long, not less precious than the high altar itself. It is composed of an amalgam of gold, silver, and copper, richly flourished and figured. It is said that an offer had been made to purchase it at its weight in silver, giving half a million of dollars besides. Of this balustrade there are not less in the building than 300 feet. Statues, vases, and huge candlesticks of the precious metals, meet the eye every where; and yet it is said that the still more precious portion of the treasure is hidden from the popular eye. The streets are wide, and cross each other at right angles, dividing the whole city into squares. But the Romish habit of giving the most sacred names to common things, is acted on in Mexico with most offensive familiarity. The names of the streets are instances of this profanation, which has existed wherever monks have been the masters. Thus, the Mexican will tell you that he lives in “Jesus,” or in the “Holy Ghost.” In the Spanish navy the most sacred names were similarly profaned; and the Santissima Trinidada (the Most Holy Trinity) was a flag-ship in the fleet destroyed at Trafalgar. What blasphemies and brutalities must not have been mingled with this sacred name in the mouths of a crew!

The churches are the chief buildings in the city, some of them of great size, and all filled with plate and other wealth. Yet the houses, even of the most opulent families, exhibit some of the vilest habits of the vilest southern cities of Europe. To pass over other matters, in the whole city there is perhaps not a stable separate from the house. The stud is on the basement story, and it may be conceived how repulsive must be the effects of such an arrangement in the burning climate of Mexico! The servants’ rooms are also upon this floor; and in some of the principal houses the visitors have to pass through this row of stables and sleeping rooms on their way to the chief apartments. In some, too, of the larger private houses, no less than thirty or forty families reside, each renting one or two rooms, and having a common stair of exit to the street. This crowding of families is produced, in the first instance, by the narrow limits of the city, which is scarcely more than two miles in length by a mile and a half in breadth; and in the next, by the lazy habits of their Spanish ancestry, which still gathered them together for the sake of gossiping and idling, and which seem every where to have had an abhorrence of cleanliness, of fresh air, and of the sight of a field; the population thus festering on each other, while the country round them is open, healthful, and cheerful. The inhabitants, to the amount of two hundred thousand, evidently prefer half suffocation in an atmosphere that tortures the nostrils of all strangers; and are content with the dust and dimness, the heat and the effluvia, naturally generated by a tropical sun acting upon a crowded population.

In addition to this voluntary offence, Mexico has two natural plagues, inundations and earthquakes. The city was once a kind of American Venice, wholly surrounded by water, penetrated by water, and built on piles in the water. A gigantic canal, which was tunnelled through its mountain barrier in the beginning of the seventeenth century, partially drained the waters of the lakes, and left it on firm ground. But the lakes, from time to time, take their revenge; clouds of a peculiarly ominous aspect begin to roll along the mountains, until they break down in a deluge. Then the genius of the land of monks exhibits itself, and all the bells in the city are rung, whether to frighten the torrent, or to propitiate the Deity. But the rain still comes down in sheets, and the torrents roar louder. The bells meet the enemy by still louder peals. At length the clouds are drained, and the torrents disappear; the bells have the praise. The city recovers its spirits, finds that its time for being swept from the earth has not yet arrived; the sun shines once more, and the monks have all the credit of this triumph over Satan and Nature.

Mexico has its museum, and it contains some curiosities which could not be supplied in any other part of the world. They are almost wholly Mexican. The weapons found among the people at the time of the conquest: rude lances, daggers, bows and arrows, with the native armour of cotton, and those wooden drums which the old Spaniards seem to have dreaded more than the arms. Among them is the Mexican “razor sword,” a staff with four projecting blades, made of volcanic glass, and brought to such sharpness that a stroke has been known to cut off a horse’s head. In the museum there are some still more curious specimens of their manufactures, paper made from the Cactus, with much of their hieroglyphic writing on it. One of these rolls exhibits the Mexican idea of the deluge, and among other details shows “the bird with a branch in its claw.” It is said that they had traditions of the leading events from the Creation to the Deluge, nearly resembling the Mosaic history; but that from the Deluge downwards all records have escaped them. But the museum contains more modern and more characteristic remains. Among the rest, the armour of Cortes.

From its size, its wearer must have been a man of small stature, and about the size of Napoleon. The armour of the brave Alvarado is also in the museum, and is even smaller than that of Cortes; but, as a covering of the form, both are complete. The wearer could have been vulnerable only at the joints; the horse of the man-at-arms was similarly protected, being in fact covered all over either with steel or bull’s hide. The use of cannon finally put an end to the wearing of armour, which was found to be useless against weight of metal. It is now partially reviving in the cuirass, and unquestionably ought to be revived among the infantry so far as covering the front of the soldiers. The idea is childish that this would degrade the intrepidity of the troops. The armour of knighthood did not degrade its intrepidity; the cuirasses of our dragoons have not degraded their intrepidity; nor will any man be the less daring from the sense that he is less exposed to the casualties of the field.

A colossal bronze statue of Charles IV. stands in the court-yard of the museum, but its history is of higher value than its subject; that history being, that it was designed by one native Mexican, and cast by another. Thus at least showing that the cultivation of the fine arts is not impossible, even in Spanish America.

There also is the great sacrificial stone on which human victims bled, a circular mass four feet high and eight in diameter, with figures in relief elaborately carved on the top and sides. On this stone sixty-two of the companions of Cortes were put to death before the eyes of their countrymen.

The finance of Mexico becomes a matter of European importance, in a period which should be called the “Age of Loans.” The debt in 1844 was about one hundred millions of dollars, of which sixty millions are due to foreigners. But the territory is evidently the richest in silver that the world has yet seen, and possibly exceeding in mineral wealth all the world beside, if we except the gold sands of the Ural, which have lately teemed with such marvellous produce. Humboldt reckoned no less than three thousand silver mines in Mexico in the year 1804. But not one fiftieth of those mines continue to be worked, a result caused by the distance of quicksilver in the mines of Old Spain. The mines produce but little gold, and that little is generally found in combination with silver. But the quantity of silver is absolutely astonishing. The mines still continue to give a produce as large as in any year of the last two centuries, in which Humboldt computes the average produce at twelve millions of dollars annually. But allowing for the quantity notoriously smuggled out of the country, besides the eighteen millions and a half of gold and silver actually registered for exportation, the produce may amount to twenty-four millions of dollars yearly. This increase evidently arises from the greater tranquillity of the country; for in the times of actual revolution, it frequently sank to three or four millions.

The American writer from whom we have taken these calculations, cannot help betraying the propensity of Yankeeism, by talking of the wonders which would be done in such a country if it were once in the possession of Jonathan. He thinks that the produce of the mines would be “at least five times as great as it is now,” that every mine would be worked, and that many more will be discovered. Calculating the exports of British produce at two hundred and sixty millions of dollars yearly, he thinks that “Mexico, if in full action, would equal that amount in ten years.” But his words are more significant still with respect to the relations of the United States. We are to remember that those words were written previously to the aggression which has just taken place against Mexico, and which the Americans pretend to be perfectly innocent and justifiable. And also, that they are written by an American minister. “Recent manifestation,” says this writer, “of a rabid, not to say rapacious spirit of acquisition of territory on the part of our countrymen, may well cause a race so inferior in all the elements of power to tremble for the tenure by which they hold this Eldorado. It is not often, with nations at least, that such temptations are resisted, or that ‘danger winks on opportunity.’ I trust, however, that our maxim ever will be, ‘noble ends by worthy means,’ and that we may remember that wealth improperly acquired never ultimately benefited an individual or a nation.”

Those are wise and just sentiments. But we unluckily see the practical morality of the Americans on the subject, in the invasion of the territory, and the slaughter of the natives.

The mineral produce is not confined to gold and silver. No country produces larger masses of that iron which so much better deserves the name of precious metal, if we are to estimate its value by its use. And tin, lead, and copper are also found in large masses.

The fertility of the soil, where it receives any tolerable cultivation, is also remarkable, and two crops may be raised in one year. But the farmers have neither capital nor inclination to cultivate the soil. Having no market, they have no use for their superfluity, and therefore they raise no superfluity. A considerable portion of the whole territory is also distributed into immense pastures of eighty or a hundred thousand cattle, and fifteen or twenty thousand mules and horses, the grass being green all the year round, and those animals being left to the course of nature. Yet, except when there is a government demand to mount the cavalry, those immense herds of horses seldom find a purchaser, nearly all agricultural work being done by oxen. Horses are sold at from eight to ten dollars a-piece. But the Mexicans exhibit the old Spanish preference for mules and a pair of handsome carriage mules will cost one thousand dollars.

Thus, in all the precious products of the earth, Mexico may stand rivalry with the most favoured nations. It is the land of the cochineal; it produces all the rice which is required for the food of the people; the silk-worm might there be multiplied to any extent; cotton can be raised in almost every province to a boundless amount. The high grounds are covered with fine timber, and, where nothing else is produced, bee’s-wax abounds; this is consumed chiefly in the churches, where a part of their religion consists in keeping candles perpetually burning. Yet the Mexican bee-masters are as careless as the rest of their countrymen, and they do not produce wax enough for this holy ignition, and great quantities are imported accordingly.

The history of Mexico, since the Spanish conquest, is a combination of the histories of European sovereignty and American republicanism.

Mexico was not among the discoveries of the great Columbus, though he approached Yucatan. That peninsula was first seen in 1517 by Cordova. In 1519 the famous Hernan Cortes landed on the site of Vera Cruz. After founding Villa Rica, he began his memorable march into the territory of Montezuma, King of the Aztecs. It cost him two years of desperate struggle to make good his ground; the Mexicans exhibited occasional bravery, and fought with the fervour of devotees to their king and their idols. But the novelty of the Spanish arms, the belief in an ancient prediction that “the kingdom was to be conquered from the sea,” and, above all, the indefatigable bravery of Cortes, finally established the supremacy of Spain.

The great source of calamity to Spain has always been its pride. The groundless sense of personal superiority in every thing belonging to Spain, its religion, its government, its literature, and its people, has, during the last four hundred years of European advance, kept Spain stationary. The country was pronounced to be perfect, and what is the use of trying to improve perfection? But the Spaniard pronounced himself as perfect as the country; and, therefore, what was the use of his adopting the inventions, habits, or intelligence of others? He disdained them all, and therefore continued the byword of ignorance, arrogance, and prejudice, to all nations. The troops of Cortes, and the gallant adventurers who followed them as settlers in the Spanish colonies, had descendants who soon began to form a powerful population. Among those, a government possessed of common sense would have found the natural support of the parent state. But the man of Spain scorned to acknowledge the equality even of the Spanish blood, when born in the colonies; and no office of trust, and no commission in the colonial troops, could be given to a Creole. The foundation of hostility was thus laid at once, and on it was raised a large superstructure.

Another race soon rose, the children of Spaniards by native women, the Mestizos. They, too, were excluded from all employments. The revolt of the United States would probably have applied the torch to this mass of combustible matter, but for the jealousy of the two races. As the men of Old Spain despised the Creole, the Creole despised the Mestizo. Thus the power of Spain remained guarded by the jealousies of both.

But a new period was at hand. The infamous seizure of Spain by Napoleon in 1808, roused both races to an abhorrence of the French name, and a determination to separate themselves from a kingdom which could now be regarded only as a French province. Again jealousy prevailed; the Creoles demanded a national representation, the Spanish troops and employés a royal government. In the midst of their disputes, a powerful enemy appeared. The Mestizos and Indians united under a village priest, Hidalgo, and overran the country. This incursion brought the disputants to a sense of their own peril; they collected troops, were beaten by the bold priest, rallied for another field, beat him, took him prisoner in the battle, and put him to death.

But the spirit of revolt had now become popular, and another priest, Morellos, was found to head another insurrection. His talents and intrepidity swept all before him for a period, and the “independence of Mexico” was declared by a “national assembly” in November 1813. But Morellos was finally unfortunate, was attacked by the Spanish general Colleja, who seems to have been a man of military genius, was taken prisoner, and shot. The Old Spaniards were once more masters, and Apodaca, a man of intelligence and conduct, was sent from Spain as viceroy.

But sudden tumults broke out in Spain itself. The “Constitution of 1820” was proclaimed, the parties in Mexico followed the example, and a constitution strongly tending to democracy was proposed. It produced a total dissolution of the alliance between the Creoles and the Old Spaniards, the former demanding a government virtually independent, the latter adhering to Spain. In the confusion, Iturbide, a young Creole of an ancient family, and of large possessions, pushed his way into power, and, to the astonishment of all Western republicanism, in 1822 proclaimed himself Augustin the First, Emperor of Mexico.

But he instantly committed the capital fault of quarrelling with his congress. By a rash policy he dissolved the assembly and appointed another, composed of his adherents. But Cromwell’s boldness required Cromwell’s abilities to sustain it. The army had been the actual givers of the throne, and what they had given they regarded themselves as having the right to resume. The generals revolted against Iturbide, overthrew him, proclaimed a new constitution, and sent him to travel in Europe on a pension!

The constitution thus formed (October 1824) was republican, and took for its model that of the United States. Its two assemblies are a senate and a house of representatives. The senate consisting of two members for each state; the representatives, of two for every eighty thousand inhabitants. All must be natives, and have landed property to the amount of eight thousand dollars, or some trade or profession which brings in ten thousand dollars annually. The congress sits every year from the first of January to the middle of April. The senators holding their seats for four years, generally; the representatives for two. The executive is vested in a president and vice-president, both elected by the state legislatures for four years. The ages of the several functionaries are curiously fixed. The representative must have attained the age of twenty-five, the senator of thirty, and the high officers of state thirty-five.[A] The whole territory forms one “Federal Republic, governed by one Executive,” a marked distinction between Mexico and its model; the several states of the American Union retaining to themselves many of the privileges which, in the Mexican, belong to the government of the capital.

[A] There have been some subsequent changes in these matters.

Iturbide, after a two years’ exile, whether uneasy in his fall, or tempted by the perpetual tumults of party at home, returned to Mexico in 1824. He was said to complain of the stoppage of his pension; but, before his arrival, a party especially hostile to him had obtained power, and Iturbide, with a rashness which exhibits the true Creole, landing, without making the natural inquiry into the actual condition of things, was instantly seized and shot. Santa Anna, who had distinguished himself in the military service, now appealed to the usual donor of power, the army, and, at the head of his squadrons, took possession of the Presidentship.

In the present confusion of Mexican affairs, the recollection of Santa Anna has been frequently brought before the mind of his nation, as the only man fit to sustain it under the difficulties of the crisis; and nothing can be more fully acknowledged, than that, among the successive leaders of the country, he has had no rival in point of decision, intelligence, and intrepidity, the qualities obviously most essential for the time.

Santa Anna, in 1823, was unknown; he was simply a colonel in the Mexican service. The declaration of public opinion in that year for Republicanism, found him a zealous convert; and at the head of his regiment he marched from Vera Cruz to meet the troops of Iturbide. He met the Emperor’s general, Echavari, half-way to the capital, and, after some trivial encounters, made a convert of his enemy; Echavari’s battalions marched into Santa Anna’s camp. Iturbide, thus suddenly stript of his troops, had no alternative but to capitulate, and go into banishment. The Republic was proclaimed, and Santa Anna was recognised as the deliverer of his country. But an occasion occurred in which his military talents were to be equally conspicuous.

In 1829, a Spanish armament, with four thousand troops under General Barrados, made its appearance off Tampico, dispatched to recover the country for the Spanish crown. This instance of activity on the part of Old Spain was so unexpected, that the Republic was in general consternation. But Santa Anna took his measures with equal intelligence and bravery. Collecting about seven hundred men hastily, crossing the Gulf in open boats, and evading the Spanish vessels of war, he landed within a few miles of the Spanish expedition. Barrados, unprepared for this dashing antagonist, had gone on some rash excursion, carrying with him three-fourths of his force; the remaining thousand were the garrison of Tampico. Santa Anna, losing no time, assaulted the place next morning, and after a four hours’ struggle, made the whole garrison prisoners. But his victory had placed him in imminent danger. Barrados rapidly returned; the Mexican general, encumbered with prisoners, found himself in presence of triple his numbers, and with a river in his rear. Death, or surrender, seemed the only alternatives. In this emergency, he dexterously proposed an armistice, impressing the Spanish general with the idea that he was at the head of an overwhelming force—an impression the more easily made, from the apparent hardihood of his venturing so near an army of Spanish veterans. One of his first conditions was, that the Mexican troops should return to their own quarters unmolested. Thus, with merely six hundred men, he escaped from five times that number. In a few days he was joined by several hundred men. He then commenced a vigorous and incessant attack on the Spanish position, which was followed by the surrender of the entire corps; and 2200 Spaniards were embarked for the Havannah as prisoners of war. Santa Anna’s force never exceeding 1500 men.

A campaign of this rank naturally placed him in a distinguished point of public view. Yet he remained in comparative quiet on his estates near Vera Cruz, probably on the Napoleon principle—waiting his opportunity. It soon came; in 1841, Bustamente, the president, fell into unpopularity; murmurs rose ominously among the troops, and Santa Anna was summoned to head a revolution. Gathering five or six hundred men, chiefly raw recruits, he marched on the capital. The enterprise was singularly adventurous, for Bustamente was an experienced officer, with 8000 men under his immediate command. Santa Anna again tried the effect of diplomacy; the result was, that Bustamente finally surrendered both his power and his place, and was shortly after sent into exile.

Santa Anna now governed the country as dictator. His administration had the rashness, but the honesty, of his Spanish origin; and Mexico, relieved from the encumbrances of her Spanish dependence, was beginning to enjoy the riches of her unparalleled climate and boundless fertility, when a new enemy arose in Texas—the American settlers, who, in the spirit of cosmopolitism, had been universally suffered to enter the Mexican territories as inhabitants. The result was, that they began to clamour for provincial independence. The natives were generally tranquil; but the new-comers intrigued, harangued, and demanded a direct alliance with the United States. The struggle has been too recent to require recital. Santa Anna, with the rashness which characterises his courage, rushed into this war with troops evidently unprepared. After various skirmishes, in which the settlers suffered severely, his undisciplined force was routed, and Santa Anna, left alone in the field, was made prisoner in the attempt to escape. The “Independence” of Texas followed, which was quickly exchanged for the “Annexation” to the United States, by which its independence was extinguished.

The “Annexation” was immediately pronounced by the Mexican government to be a breach of that treaty by which the neighbour States were pledged to respect the possessions of each other; and the invasion of Mexico by an American army was the consequence. The Mexican force on the frontier was obviously too feeble for any effective resistance; and the American general, after some delays of movement, and divisions of his forces, which one active officer on the defensive would have turned to his ruin, attacked the Mexicans, drove them from their position, and took their guns. Since that period the advance of the Americans seems to have been checked by the difficulties of the country. Whether it is the intention of the American commander to fight, or to negotiate, to make a dash for the capital, or to treat for California, must be left to be discovered by events. But Paredes, the present head of the state, and commander of the troops, has the reputation of a brave officer, and Santa Anna is strongly spoken of as the man whom the nation would gladly summon to the redemption of his country.

But Mexico has one fatal feature which makes the mind despair of her ever holding the rank of a great nation. However glaring may be the superstition of continental Europe, it is of a feeble hue to the extravagance of Mexican ceremonial. In those remote countries, once guarded under the Spanish government with the most jealous vigilance from the stranger’s eye, every ceremonial was gradually adopted, of every shape and colour, which the deepest superstition, aided by great wealth, the influence of a powerful hierarchy, and the zeal of a people at once desperately ignorant and singularly fond of show, could invent. Rome, and even Naples, were moderate, compared with Mexico. The conveyance of the Host to the sick was almost a public pageant; its carriage to the wife of Santa Anna was accompanied by twenty thousand people. The feast of Corpus Christi exhibits streets through which thirty or forty thousand people pour along, of all classes of society, with thousands of soldiery, to swell and give military brilliancy to the display. At the head of the pageant moves a platform, on which the wafer is borne by the highest dignitaries of the church. Then follows, in a similar vehicle, “Our Lady of the Remedies,” the blessed Virgin Mother, a little alabaster doll, with the nose broken and an eye out. This was the image of herself given by the Virgin to Cortes to revive the valour of his soldiers after their Mexican defeat; and this the priests profess to believe, and the populace actually do believe. The doll’s wardrobe, with its precious stones, is valued at a million of dollars. The doll stops all contagious diseases, and is remarkably active in times of cholera.

Some of the popular exhibitions on Scriptural subjects are actually too startling to be described to Christian ears. Among those is the exhibition of the Nativity, as the especial display of Christmas eve. Joseph enters Bethlehem with Mary; they are sitting on the same mule; they search the city for lodgings in vain. At last they find the stable. The rest of the exhibition, a part of which, however, passes behind a curtain, is indescribable. And all this is done with the highest approbation of the ecclesiastical authorities.

The anniversary of the “Miracle” of the “Virgin of Guadaloupe,” is one of the “grand days” of the Federal Republic. The president, the cabinet, the archbishop, and all the principal functionaries of the state, are present, with an immense multitude of every class. A member of Congress delivers an oration on the subject; and the Virgin and her story are no more doubted than the history of Magna Charta. The story thus blazoned, and thus believed, is briefly this:—

An Indian, going to Mexico one morning in the sixteenth century, saw a female form descending from the sky. He was frightened; but the female told him that she was the Virgin Mary, come down to be the patron of the Mexican Indians, and ordered him to announce to the bishop that a church must be built in the mountain where she met him. The Indian flew to the bishop, but the prelate drove him away. The next day he met the Virgin on the same spot, and she appointed a day to convince the sceptical ecclesiastic. She bid him go to the summit of the mountain, where he should find the rock covered with roses for the first time since the Creation. He carried the roses in his apron to the bishop, when, lo! he found that on his apron was stamped a figure of the Virgin in a cloak of velvet spangled with stars of gold! Her proof was irresistible, and the church was built. The original portrait is still displayed there, in a golden frame studded with precious stones, with the motto, Non fecit taliter omni nationi. (He hath not so done to every nation; or, more significantly, to any other nation.) Copies of the miraculous picture, of more or less costliness, are to be found in almost every house, and all have the full homage of saintship. The Church of the Virgin, though not so large as the Cathedral, is of a finer style, and nearly as rich; the balustrade is pure silver, and all the candelabra, &c., are of the precious metals.

The idleness and the low class of life from which the majority of the monks and friars are taken, make celibacy especially dangerous to the community. The higher orders of the priesthood are comparatively decorous; but many of them have these suspicious appendages to a priest’s household, which are called “house-keepers,” with a proportionate share of those equally suspicious appendages, which are popularly called “nephews and nieces,” the whole system being one which furnishes a large portion of the gossip of Mexican society. But on those topics we have no wish to dwell.

Whether the American invasion will succeed in reaching Mexico, or in obtaining Upper California, or in breaking up the Federation, are matters still in the future. The disruption of the Federation seems to have been already, and spontaneously begun; Yucatan is said to have demanded independence; and the northern provinces bordering on the United States will, in all probability, soon make the same demand. It is obvious that the present Mexican territory is too large for the varying, distracted, and feeble government which Mexico has exhibited for the last quarter of a century—a territory seven times the size of France, or perhaps ten times that size, can be governed by a central capital only so long as the population continues scanty, powerless, and poor. But if Mexico had a population proportionate to France, and there is no reason for doubting its capacity of supporting such a population, the capital would govern a territory containing little less than three hundred millions of men; an obvious impossibility, where those men were active, opulent, intelligent, and engaged in traffic with the world. The example of the Chinese population is not a contrary case. There the empire was old, the throne almost sacred, the imperial power supported by a large military establishment, the character of the people timid, and the country in a state of mental stagnation. Yet, even for China, great changes may be at hand.

But the whole subject is to be looked on in a more comprehensive point of view. There is a general shaking of nations. The Turk, the Egyptian, the African, and the Chinese, have all experienced an impulse within late years, which has powerfully influenced their whole system. That impulse is now going westward. The immense regions beyond the Atlantic are now commencing the second stage of that existence, of which their discovery by Europe was the first. The language, the habits and history, the political feelings of England, are becoming familiar to them. They have begun their national education in the great school of self-government, with England for their teacher; and however tardy may be the pupilage, or however severe the events which turn the theory into example, we have strong faith in the conception, that all things will finally work together for good, and that a spirit of regeneration is already sent forth on its mighty mission to the New World as to the Old, to the “bond as to the free;” to those whom misgovernment has enfeebled, and superstition has debased, as to those who, possessing the original advantages of civilisation and religion, have struggled their difficult way to increasing knowledge, truth, and freedom, and whose progress has alike conferred on them the power, and laid upon them the duty, of being the moral leaders of Mankind.

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A SUMMER DAY.
By Thomas Aird.

Morning.

Dear little Isle of ours! your very clouds,
Ranged in the east and battlemented black,
White flock of zenith, or, with stormy glory,
Tumbling tumultuous o’er the western hills,
Lend power and beauty to your pictured face,
Relieved and deepened in its light and shade,
Varied of dale and mountain, pleasing still
Through all the seasons, as they come and go,—
Blue airy Summer, Autumn brown and grave,
Gnarled sapless Winter, and clear glinting Spring.

Mine be the cottage, large enough for use,
Yet fully occupied, and cheerful thus.
Desolate he who, with his means abridged,
And wants reduced, yet pride of property
Still unimpaired, dwells in a narrow flank;
Of his ancestral house, gloomily vast
Beyond his need,—dwells with the faded ghost
Of former greatness. There the bellied spider,
That works in cool and silent palaces,
Has halls his own. The labyrinthine rooms
Seem haunted all. Mysterious laden airs
Move the dim tapestries drearily. And shapes
Spectral at hollow midnight beckoning glide
Down the far corridors, and faint away.

Up with the summer sun! Earlier at times,
And see gray brindled dawn come up before him;
There’s natural health, there’s moral healing in
The hour so naked clear, so dewy cool!
But oft I wish a chamber in the black
Castle of Indolence, far in, where spark
Of prying light ne’er comes, nor sound of cock
Is heard, nor the long howl of houseless cur,
Nor clock, nor shrill-winged gnat, nor buzzing fly
That, by the snoring member undeterred,
Aye settles on your nose’s tickled tip
Tormentingly. Deep in that charmèd rest
Laid, I could sleep the weary world away,
Months at a time—so listless fancy thinks.

Oh! curse of sleeplessness! Haggard and pale,
The tyrant Nero, see him from his bed
Wandering about, haunting the long dim halls,
And silent stairs, at midnight, startled oft
At his own footsteps, like a guilty thing
Sharp turning round aghast. The palace sleeps,
And all the city sleeps, all save its lord.
Then looks he to the windows of the east,
Wearily watching for the morning light,
That comes not at his will. Down on his bed
He flings himself again. His eyeballs ache;
His temples throb; his pillow’s hot and hard;
And through his dried brain thoughts and feelings drift,
Tumultuous, unrestrained, carrying his soul
On the high fever’s surge. The imperial world
For one short dewy hour of healing sleep!
Worlds cannot buy the blessing. Up he reels,
And staggers forth. Slow-coming day at length
Has found him thus. Its living busy forms,
Its turms, its senators, its gorgeous guests,
Bowing in homage from barbaric isles,
Its scenes, its duties are to him a strange
Phantasmagoria: Through its ghastly light
Wildered he lives. To feel and be assured
He yet has hold on being, with the drugs
Of monstrous pleasures, cruelty and lust,
He drugs his spirit; ever longing still
For the soft hour of eve, if sleep may come
After another day has worn him out.
But images of black, bed-fellows strange,
Lie down with him; drawing his curtain back,
Unearthly shapes, and unimagined faces,
Look in upon him, near down on his eyes,
Nearer and nearer still, till they are forced
To wink beneath the infliction, like a weight
Of actual pressure, solid, heavy, felt.
But winking hard, a thousand coloured motes
Begin to dance confused, and central stars,
And spots of light, welling and widening out
In rings concentric, peopling all the blind
Black vacancy before his burning balls.
But soon they change to leering antic shapes,
And dread-suggesting fiends. Dim, far away,
Long dripping corpses, swaying in the waves,
Slowly cast up, arise; gashed, gory throats,
And headless trunks of men, are nearer seen,
And every form of tragic butchery—
The myriad victims of his power abused
By sea and land. To give their hideousness
Due light, a ceiling of clear molten fire,
Figured with sprawling imps, begins to glow
Hot overhead, casting a brazen light
Down on the murdered crew. All bent on him,
Near, nearer still, they swarm, they crowd, they press;
And round and round, and through and through the rout,
The naked Pleasures, knit with demons, dance.
Wild whirls his brain anew. This night is as
The last, and far more terrible. Guilt thus,
And sleeplessness, more than perpetuate
Each other—dreadful lineage! Let us hope,
For human nature, that the man was mad.

Up from your blameless sleep, go forth and meet
The glistening morn, over the smoking lawn
Spangled, by briery balks, and brambled lanes,
Where blows the dog-rose, and the honey-suckle
Hangs o’er the heavy hedge its trailing sheaf
Of stems and leaves, tendrils and clasping rings,
Cold dews, and bugle blooms, and honey smells,
And wild bees swinging as they murmur there.
The speckled thrush, startled from off the thorn,
Shakes down the crystal drops. With spurring haste,
The rabbit scuds across the grassy path;
Pauses a moment—with its form and ears
Arrect to listen; then, with glimpse of white,
Springs through the hedge into the ferny brake.
Or taste the freshness of the pastoral hills
On such a morn: Light scarfs of thinning mist
In graceful lingerings round their shoulders hang;
New-washed and white, the sheep go nibbling up
The high green slopes; a hundred gurgling rills,
Sparkling with foam-bells, to your very heart
Send their delicious coolness; hark! again,
The cuckoo somewhere in the sunny skirts
Of yonder patch of the old natural woods;
With sudden iron croak, clear o’er the gray
Summit, o’erhanging you, with levell’d flight,
The raven shoots into the deep blue air.

Lo! in the confluence of the mountain glens,
The small gray ruin of an ancient kirk.
’Twas the first kirk, so faithful reverence tells,
Of Scotland’s Reformation: And it drew,
Now as before, from all the hills around
The worshippers; till, in a richer vale,
To suit the populous hamlet rising there,
A larger, nearer parish church was built.
Thus was the old one left. But there it stands,
And there will stand till the slow tooth of Time
Nibble it all away; for it is fenced
Completely round, not with just awe alone,
But superstitious fears, the abuse of awe
In simple minds: Strange judgments, so they say,
Have fallen on those who once or twice have dared
To lay their hands upon its holy stones
For secular uses, and remove its bell.
With such excess of love—we’ll blame it not—
Does Scotland love her Church. Be it so still
And be its emblem still the Burning Bush!
Bush of the wilderness! See how the flames
Bicker and burn around it; but a low
Soft breath of the great Spirit of Salvation
Blows gracious by, and the dear little Bush,
The desert Bush, in every freshened leaf
Uncurled, unsinged in every flowery bud,
Fragrant with heavenly dews, and dropping balsams
Good for the hurt soul’s healing, waves and rustles,
Even in the very heart of the red burning,
In livelier green and fairer blossoming.

Earth sends her soft warm incense up to heaven;
The birds their matins sing. Joining the hymn,
The tremulous voice of psalms from human lips
Is heard in the free air. You wonder where,
And who the worshippers. Behold them now,
Down in the grassy hollow lowly seated,
Close by the mountain burn—an old gray man,
His head uncovered, and the Book of life
Spread on his knee, a female by his side,
His aged wife, both beggars by their garb,
With frail cracked voices, yet with hearts attuned
To the immortal harmonies of faith,
And hope, and love, in the green wilderness
Praising the Lord their God—a touching sight!
High in the Heavenly House not made with hands,
The archangels sing, angels, and saints in white,
Striking their golden harps before the Throne;
But, in the pauses of the symphony
A voice comes up from Earth, the simple psalm
Of those old beggars, heard by the Ear of God
With more acceptance than hosannahs sung
In blissful jubilee. ’Tis hard to think
The people of the Lord must beg their bread;
Yet happy they who, poor as this old twain
On earth, like them, have laid fast titled hold
Upon the treasures of Eternity!

Her nest is here: But ah! the cunning thing,
See where our White-throat, like the partridge, feigns
A broken wing, thick fluttering o’er the ground,
And tumbling oft, to draw you from her brood
Within the bush. Now that’s a lie, my birdie!
Your wing’s not broken; but we’ll grant you this,—
The lie’s a white one, white as your own throat.
Yet how should He who is the Truth itself,
And whose unquestioned prompting instinct is,
Implant deceit within your little breast,
And make you act it, even to save your young?
The whole creation groans for man, for sin,
And death its consequence: We’re changed to you
In our relations, birdie; as a part
Of that primeval ill, we rob your nest.
To meet this change, and in God’s own permission
Of moral wrong, was it, that guile was given
Even to the truest instinct of your love;
And your deceit is our reflected sin?
Subtle philosopher, or sound divine,
’Tis a grave question; can you answer it?
The more we wonder at the curious warp
From truth, the more we see the o’erruling law
Of natural love in all things, which will be
A fraud in instinct, rather than a flaw
In care parental. Oh! how gracious good,
That all the generations, as they rise,
Of living things are not sustained by one
Great abstract fiat of Benevolence;
But by a thousand separate forms of love,
All tremblingly alive: The human heart,
With all its conduits and its channel-pipes,
Warm, flowing, full, quiveringly keen and strong
In all its tendrils and its bloody threads,
Laying hold of its children with the fast
Bands of a man; fish, bird, beast, reptile, insect,
The wallowing, belching monsters of the deep,
Down to the filmiest people of the leaf,
Are all God’s nurses, and draw out the breast,
Or brood for Him. Oh! what a system thus
Of active love, of every shape and kind,
Has been created, from the Heart of Heaven
Extended, multiplied, personified
In living forms throughout the Universe!

In life’s first glee, and first untutored grace,
With raven tresses, and with glancing eyes,
How beautiful those children, lustrous dark,
Pulling the kingcups in the flowery meadow!
Born of an Indian Mother: She by night,
An orphan damsel on her native hills,
Looked down the Khyber Pass, with pity touched
For the brave strangers that lay slain in heaps,
Low in that fatal fold and pen of death.
Sorrow had taught her mercy: Forth she went
With simple cordials from her lonely cot,
If she might help to save some wounded foe.
By cavern went she, and tall ice-glazed rock,
Casting its spectral shadow on the snow,
Beneath the hard blue moon. Save her own feet
Crushing the starry spangles of the frost,
Sound there was none on all the silent hills;
And silence filled the valley of the dead.
Down went the maid aslant. A cliff’s recess
Gave forth a living form. A wounded youth,
One unit relic of that thick battue,
Escaping death, and mastering his deep hurt,
From out the bloody Pass had climbed thus far
The mountain side, and rested there a while.
The virgin near, up rose he heavily,
Staggered into the light, and stood before her,
Bowing for help. She gave him sweet-spiced milk,
And led him to her home, and hid him there
Months, till pursuit was o’er, and he was healed,
And from her mountains he could safely go.
But grateful Walter loved the Affghan girl,
And would not go without her: They had taught
Each other language: Will she go with him
To the Isles of the West, and be his wife?
Nor less she loved the fair-haired islander,
And softly answered, Yes. And she is now
His Christian wife, wondering and loving much
In this mild land, honoured and loved of all;
With such a grace of glad humility
She does her duties. And, to crown her joy
Of holy wedded life, her God has given her
Those beauteous children, with the laughing voices,
Pulling the kingcups in the flowery meadow.

Our walk is o’er. But let us see our bees,
Before we turn into our ivied porch.
The little honey-folk, how wise are they!
Their polity, their industry, their work,
The help they take from man, and what they give him
Of fragrant nectar, sea-green, clear, and sweet,
Invest them almost with the dignity
Of human neighbourhood, without the intrusion.
Coming and going, what a hum and stir!
The dewy morn they love, the sunny day,
With showery dropping balms, liquoring the flowers
In every vein and eye. But when the heavens
Grow cloudy, and the quick-engendered blasts
Darken and whiten as they skiff along
The mountain-tops, till all the nearer air,
Seized with the gloom, is turbid, dense, and cold,
Back from their far-off foraging the bees,
In myriads, saddened into small black motes,
Strike through the troubled air, sharp past your head,
And almost hitting you, their lines of flight
Converging, thickening, as they draw near home;
So much they fear the storms, so much they love
The safety of their straw-built citadels.

Noon.

At times a bird slides through the glossy air,
O’er the enamelled woodlands; but no chirp
Of song is heard: All’s dumb and panting heat.
How waste and idle are yon river sands,
Far-stretching white! The stream is almost shrunk
Down to the green gleet of its slippery stones;
And in it stand the cows, switching their tails,
With circling drops, and ruminating slow.
A hermit glutton on a sodded root,
Fish-gorged, his head and bill sunk to his breast,
The lean blue heron stands, and there will stand
Motionless all the long dull afternoon.

But the old woods are near, with grateful glooms,
Dells, silent grottoes, and cold sunken wells;
There rest on mossy seats, and be refreshed:
Thankful you toil not, at this blazing hour,
Beneath the dog-star, in some sandy lane
Of the strait sea-coast town, pent closely in
With walls of fiery brick, their tops stuck o’er
With broken pointed glass, and danders hot
Fencing their feet, with sparse ears of wild barley
Parched, dun, and dead amongst them; o’er your head
The smoke of potteries, and the foundry vent
Sending its quivering exhalation up—
Heat more than smoke; to aggravate the whole,
The sweltering, smothering, suffocating whole,
The oppressive sense upon your heart of man’s
Worst dwellings round you—smells of stinking fish,
Torn dingy shirts, half washed, flea-spotted still,
Hung out on bending strings at broken windows;
Hunger, and fear, and pale disordered faces,
Lies, drunken strife, strokes, cries, and new-coined oaths,
All hot and rough from the red mint of hell.

Lo! with her screwed tail cocked aloft in air,
The cottar’s cow comes scampering clumsily.
Her, sorely cupped and leeched, the clegs have stung
From her propriety; and hoisting high
Her standard of distress, this way she comes
Cantering unwieldily, her heavy udder,
Dropping out milk, swinging from side to side.
Pathetic sight! So long have we been used
To see the solemn tenor of her life,
From calfhood to her present reverend age
Of wrinkled front, scored horns, and hollow back,—
Tenor unbroken, save when once or twice
A pool of frothy blood before the smithy
Has made her snuff, snort, paw, and toss her head,
Wheel round and round, and slavering bellow mad:
That blood the cadger’s horse, seized with the bots,
When he on cobwebbed clover, raw and cold,
Had supped, gave spouting, spinning from his neck,
Beneath the blacksmith’s mallet and his fleam.
Is this the cow, at home so patient o’er
The cool sobriety of cabbage leaves,
Hoarse cropped for her at morn, when the night-drops
Lie like big diamonds in the freshened stock,—
Drops broken, running, scattered, but again
Conglobed like quicksilver, until they fall
Shaken to earth? Is this the milky mother,
That long has given to thankful squeezing hands,
With such an air of steady usefulness,
The children’s streaming food—twelve pints a day;
And with her butter, and her cheese, and cans
Of white-green whey, has bought the grocery goods,
Snuff and tobacco? Oh! the affecting sight!
Help, help, ye Shades, the venerable brute!
But gradually subsiding to a trot,
She takes the river with a fellow-feeling,
And, modestly aloof to raise no strife,
There settles down behind the stranger cows.
Ah! Crummie, you have stolen this scampering march
Upon the little cow-herd. Far are heard
The opening roarings of his wondering fear,
Nearer and nearer still, as they come on,
Loading the noontide air. Three other friends
Had he to feed, besides the family cow.
Twin cushats young, the yellow hair now sparse
In their thick gathering plumage, nestling lie
Within his bonnet; they can snap, and strike
With raised wing; grown vigorous thus, they need
A larger dinner of provided peas.
Nor less his hawk, shrill-screaming as it shakes
Its wings for food, must have the knotted worms
From moist cold beds below the unwholesome stone,
That never has been raised—if he be quick
To raise it, and can seize them ere they slink
Into their holes, or, when half in, can draw them,
With a long, steady, gentle, equal pull,
Tenacious though they be, and tender stretched
Till every rib seems ready to give way,
Unbroken out in all their slippery length.
These now he wandered seeking, for the ground
Was parched, and they the surface all had left;
And many a stone he raised, but nothing saw,
Save insect eggs, and shells of beetles’ wings,
Slaters, cocoons, and yellow centipedes.
Thus was he drawn away. When he came back,
His cow was gone. Dismayed, he looked all round.
At last he saw, far-off on the horizon,
Her hoisted tail. He seized his birds and ran,
Following the tail, and as he ran he roared.
Yonder he comes in view with red-hot face;
Roaring the more to see old Crummie take
The river—how shall he dislodge her thence;
And get her home again? Oh! deep distress!

The world is flooded with the dazzling day.
We take the woods. Couched in the checkered skirts,
Below an elm we lie. A sylvan stream
Is sleeping by us in a cold still pool,
Within whose glassy depth the little fishes
Hang, as in crystal air. Freckled with gleams,
’Neath yonder hazelly bank that roofs it o’er
With roots and moss, it slides and slips away.
Here a ray’d spot of light, intensely clear,
Strikes our eyes through the leaves; a sunbeam there
Comes slanting in between the mossy trunks
Of the green trees, and misty shimmering falls
With a long slope down on the glossy ferns:
Light filmy flies athwart it brightening shoot,
Or dance and hover in the motty ray.

We love the umbrageous Elm. Its well-crimp’d leaf,
Serrated, fresh, and rough as a cow’s tongue,
Is healthy, natural, and cooling, far
Beyond the glazy polish of the bay,
Famed though it be, but glittering hard as if
’Twere liquor’d o’er with some metallic wash.
Thus pleased, laid back, up through the Elm o’erhead
We look. The little Creeper of the Tree
Lends life to it: See how the antic bird,
Her bosom to the bark, goes round away
Behind the trunk, but quaintly reappears
Through a rough cleft above, with busy bill
Picking her lunch; and now among the leaves
Our birdie goes, bright glimmering in the green
And yellow light that fills the tender tree.

Low o’er the burnie bends the drooping Birch:
Fair tree! Though oft its cuticle of bark
Hangs in white fluttering tatters on its breast,
No fairer twinkles in the dewy glade.
Sweet is its scented breath, the wild deer loves it,
And snuffs and browses at the budding spray.
But far more tempting to the truant’s eyes,
Wandering the woods, its thick excrescences
Of bundled matted sprigs: Soft steals he on,
To find what seems afar the cushat’s nest,
Or pie’s or crow’s. Deceived, yet if the tree
Is old, he seeks in its decaying clefts
The fungous cork-wood that gives balls to boys,
And smooth-skinn’d razor-strops to bearded men.
Bent all on play, our little urchin next
Peels off a bit of bark, and with his nails
Splits and divides the many-coated rind
To the last outer thinness; then he holds
The silky shivering film between his lips,
And pipes and whistles, mimicking the thrush.

Nor less the Beauty of our natural woods
Is useful too. What time the housewife’s pirn
(Oh, cheerless change that stopp’d the birring wheel!)
Whirled glimmering round before the evening fire,
’Twas birchen aye. And when our tough-heel’d shoes
Have stood the tear and wear of stony hills
Beyond our hope, we bless the birchen pegs.
In Norway o’er the foam, their crackling fires
Are fed with bark of birch, and there they thatch
Their simple houses with its pliant twigs.
At home, the virtues of our civic besoms
Confess the birch. The Master of the School
Is now “abroad:” Oh! may he never miss,
Wander where’er he will, the birchen shaw,
But cut the immemorial ferula,
To lay in pickle for rebellious imps,
And discipline to worth the British youth.

The Queen can make a Duke; but cannot make
One of the forest’s old Aristocrats.
Behold yon Oak! What glory in his bole,
His boughs, his branches, his broad frondent head!
The ancient Nobleman! Not She who rules
The kingdoms, many-isled, on which the sun
Never goes down, with all the investiture
Of garters, coronets, scutcheons, swords, and stars,
Could make him there at once. Patrician! Nay,
King of the woods, his independent realm!
Whate’er his titled name, there let him stand,
Fit emblem of our British constitution,
Full constituted in the rooted Past,
With powers, and forces, and accommodations,
The growth of ages, not an act or work!
Beyond this emblem of old diguity,
And far beyond the associated thought
Of “Hearts of Oak,” that mightiest incarnation
Of human power that earth has ever seen—
As when we launch’d our Nelson, and he went
Thundering around the world, driving the foe,
With all their banded hosts, from hemisphere
To hemisphere, before him, by the terror
Of his tremendous name, but overtook
And thunder-smote them down, swept from the seas,—
Beyond all this, the reverend Oak takes back
The heart to elder days of holy awe.
Such oaks are they, the hoariest of the race,
Round Lochwood Tower, the Johnstones’ ancient seat.
Bow’d down with very age, and rough all o’er
With scurfy moss, and the depending hair
Of parasitic plants, (the mistletoe,
Be sure, is there, congenial friend of old,)
They look as if no lively little bird
Durst hop upon their spirit-awing heads:
Perhaps, at midnight hour, Minerva’s bird,
The grave, staid owl, may rest a moment there.
But solemn visions swarm on every bough,
Of Druid doings in old dusky time.

When lowers the thunder cloud, and all the trees
Stand black and still, with what a trump profound
The wild bee wanders by! But here he is,
Hoarse murmuring in the fox-glove’s weigh’d-down bell.
Happy in sumner he! but when the days
Of later autumn come, they’ll find him hanging
In torpid stupor, on the horse-knot’s top;
Or by the ragweed in the school-boy’s hand,
As forth he issues, angry from his bike,
Struck down, he’ll die—what time the urchins, bent
On honey, delve into the solid ground:
They seize the yellower and the cleaner comb,
But drop it quick, when squeezing it they find
Nought there but milky maggots; then they pick
The darker bits, and suck them, though they be
Wild, bitter flavoured, in their luscious strength,
And dirty brown, and mix’d with earthen mould.
The luckier mower in the grassy mead,
Turns up with his scythe’s point, or with its edge,
The foggie’s bike, a ball of soft, dry fog.
With what a sharp, thin, acrid, pent-up buzz,
Swarming, it lives and stirs! But when the bees
Are all dislodged, and, circling, wheel away,
The swain rejoices in that bright clean honey.

Ah! there’s Miss Kitty Wren, with her cocked tail,
Cocked like a cooper’s thumb. Miss Kitty goes
In ’neath the bank, and then comes out again
By some queer hole. Thus, all the day she plies
Her quest from hedge to bank, scarce ever seen
Flying above your head in open air.
Unsmitten by the heat where now she is,
She strikes into her song—Miss Kitty’s song!
(We never think of male in Kitty’s case.)
The song is short, and varies not, but yet
’Tis not monotonous; with such a pipe
Of liquid clearness does she open it,
And, with increasing vigour, to the end
Go through it quite: Thus, all the year, she sings,
Except in frost, the spunky little bird!
On mossy stump of thorn, her curious nest
Is often built, a twig drawn over it,
To bind it firm; but more she loves the roof
Of sylvan cave over-arched, where the green twilight
Glimmers with golden light, and fox-gloves stand,
Tall, purple-faced, her goodly beef-eaters,
To guard and dignify her entrance-gate.
The ballad vouches that a wee, wee bird
Oft brings a whispered message to the ear;
So here’s our ear, Miss Wren, (your pardon! we
Must call you Mrs now,) pray, tell us how
You manage, in your crowded little house,
To feed your thirteen young, nor miss one mouth
In its due turn, but give them all fair play?
And here’s our other ear; say, ere you go,
What means the Bachelor’s Nest? ’Tis oftener found
Than the true finished one. Externally,
’Tis built as well; but ne’er we find within
The cozy feathery lining for the home
Of love parental. Is it, as some think,
And as the name, though not precise, implies,
Made for your husband, whosoe’er he be,
To sleep o’nights in? Or, as others deem,
Is it a lure to draw the loiterer’s eye
Off from the genuine nest, not far away?
Or, shy and nice, were you disturbed in building;
Or by some other instinct, fine and true,
Impelled to change your first-projected place,
And choose a safer? This your Laureate holds.

But here comes Robin. In our boyish days,
We thought him Kitty’s husband. By his clear
Black eye, he’s fit to answer for himself.
Like her, he sings the whole year round; but she
Is not his wife. See how he turns the head
This way and that, peeping from out the leaves
With curious eye, and still comes hopping nearer.
Strong in his individual character,
His knowing glance, his shape, his waistcoat red,
His pipe mellifluous, and pugnacious pride,
Darting to strike intruders from his beat,
And other qualities, his love of man
Is still his great peculiarity.
The starved hedge-sparrow haunts the moistened sink,
On gurly winter days, the bitter wind
Ruffling her back, showing the bluer down
Beneath her feathers freckled brown above,
But ne’er she ventures nearer where man dwells.
With sidelong look, bold Robin takes our floor;
And when, as now, we rest us in the depths
Of leafy woods, he’s with us in a trice.
Such is the genius of red-breasted Robin.

Along the shingly shallows of the burn,
The smallest bird that walks, and does not hop,
How fast yon Wagtail runs; its little feet
Quick as a mouse’s! Thus its shaking tail
Is kept in even balance, poised and straight.
With hopping movements ’twould not harmonise,
But, wagging inconveniently more,
Mar and confound the bird’s progressive way,
When off the wing. Wisdom Divine contrived
The just proportions of this compromise
Betwixt the motions of the feet and tail.
Aloft in air, each chirrup keeping time
With each successive undulation long,
The Wagtail flies, a pleasant summer bird.

A moment on the elm above our head
Rests the Green-linnet. Wordsworth says, He “from
The cottage-eaves pours forth his song in gushes.”
Not so in Scotland: Here he sometimes builds
His nest within the garden’s beechen hedge;
But never haunts our eaves. As for his song,
A few short notes, meagre and harsh, are all
This somewhat spiritless and lumpish bird
Has ever given us. Can the Master err?

With all the short thick rowing of her wings
The Magpie makes slow way. But her glib tongue
Goes chattering fast enough. In yonder fir,
The summer solstice cannnot keep her mute.
Surely, the bird should speak: Take the young pie,
And with a silver sixpence split its tongue,
’Twill speak incontinent; thus the notion runs
From simple father down to simple son,
In many parts. Oft in our boyhood’s days
We’ve seen it tried; but somehow, by bad luck,
It always happened that the poor bird died,
When, doubtless, just upon the eve of speech.
Sore was the splitting then, but far worse now:
The sixpence then, worn till it lost the head
Of George the Third, was thin as a knife’s edge,
And fitly sharp; the coin’s now thick and dull,
And makes the clumsier cleaving full of pain.
As boys we feared the magpie, for ’twas held
A bird of omen: oft ’twas seen to tear
With mad extravagant bill the cottage thatch,
Herald of death within: To neighbouring towns
The schoolboy, sent on morning messages,
Counted with awe how many pies at once
Hopped on his road; by this he learned to know
The various fortunes of the coming time.

Sweet lore was yours, O Bewick! with that eye
So keen, yet quiet, for the Beautiful,
And for the Droll—that eye so loving large!
Yet sweeter, Wilson, yours, as yours a range
More ample far, watching the goings-on
Of Nature in the boundless solitudes.
We know no happier man than him, at once,
With native powers, fixed from a restless youth,
To a great work congenial, which his might
Of conscious will has mastered ere begun;
Life’s work, and the foundation of his fame:
But oh! its sweetness, if in Nature’s eye
His is the privilege to work it out!
Such was the work of Wilson. Happy, too,
Is Audubon. When Day, like a bright bird,
Throughout the heavens has flown, chased by the black
Falcon of Night, he sleeps beneath a tree;
Upspringing with the morn, the enthusiast holds
On his green way rejoicing: His to catch,
And fix the creatures of the wilderness
In pictured forms, not in the attitudes
Of stiff convenience, but in all their play
Of happy natural life, fearless, untamed
By man’s intrusion, wanton, easy, free,
Yet full of tart peculiarities,
Freakish, and quaint, and ever picturesque,
Their secret gestures, and the wild escapes
From out their eyes; watching how Nature works
Her fine frugalities of means, even there
Where all is lavish freedom, finer still,
The compensations of her processes,
Throughout their whole economy of life.
Sweet study! Oh! for one long summer day
With Audubon in the far Western woods!

We leave the shade, and take the open fields,
Winding our way by immemorial paths,
So soft and green, the poor man’s privilege:
May jealous freedom ever keep them free!
Such is the sultry languor of the day,
The eye sees nothing clear. But now it rests
On yonder sable patch—ah! yes, a band
Of mourners gathered round a closing grave,
In the old churchyard. How unnatural
The black solemnity in such a day
Of light and life! But who was he or she
Who thus goes dust to dust? A matron ripe
In years and grace at once for death and Heaven.
Her aged father’s stay until he died,
She then was wed and widowed in one year,
And made a mother. With her infant son
She dwelt in peace, and nourished him with love.
Mild and sedate, upgrew the old-fashioned boy;
And went to church with her, a little man
In garb and gravity: you would have smiled
To see him coming in. She lifted him
Up to his seat beside her, drew him near,
And took his hand in hers. There as he sate,
Oft looked she down to see if he was sleeping;
And drowsy half, half in the languor soft
Of innocent trust and aimless piety,
The child looked up into his mother’s face.
And she looked down into his eyes, and saw
The neighbouring window in their pupils’ balls,
With all its panes, reflected small but clear;
And gave his hand soft pressure with her hand,
Still shifting, trying still to be more soft.
God took him from her. In a holy stillness
She dwelt concentred. Decent were her means,
And so she changed not outwardly. No trouble
Gave she to neighbours; but she helped them oft.
And when she died, her grave-clothes, there they were,
Made by her own preparing heart and hand,
And neatly folded in an antique chest:
Not even a pin was wanting, where, to dress
Her body with due care, a pin should be;
And every pin was stuck in its own place.
Nor was all this from any hard mistrust
Of human love, for she the charities
Took with glad heart; but from a strength of mind
Which stood equipped in every point for death,
And, loving order, loved it to the end.

The mourners all are gone. How lonely still
The churchyard now! Here in their simple graves
The generations of the hamlet sleep:
All grassy simple, save that, here and there,
Love-planted flowerets deck the lowly sod.
Blame not that sorrowing love: ’Tis far too true
To make of Burial one of the Fine Arts;
Yet the sweet thought that scented violets spring
From the loved ashes, is a natural war
Against the foul dishonours of the grave.
Bloom then, ye little flowers, and sweetly smell;
Draw up the heart’s dust in your flushing hues,
And odorous breath, and give it to the bee,
And give it to the air, circling to go
From life to life, through all that living flux
Of interchange which makes this wondrous world.
Go where it will, the dear dust is not lost;
Found it will be in its own place and form,
On that great day, the Resurrection Day.

Evening.

Those shouts proclaim the village school is out.
This way and that, the children break in groups;
Some by the sunny stile, and meadow path,
Slow sauntering homeward; others to the burn
Bounding, beneath the stones, and roots, and banks,
With stealthy hand to catch the spotted trout,
Or stab the eel, or slip their noose of hair
Over the bearded loach, and jerk him out.
Here on his donkey, slow as any snail
At morn from the far farm, but, homeward now,
Willing and fast, an urchin blithe and bold
Comes scampering on: His face is to the tail
In fun grotesque; stooping, with both his hands
He holds the hairy rump; his kicking feet
Go walloping; his empty flask of tin,
That bore his noon of milk, quiver of life,
And not of death, high-bounding on his back,
Rattles the while. With many a whoop behind,
Scouring the dusty road with their bare feet,
In wicked glee, a squad of fellow-imps
Come on with thistles and with nettle-wands,
Pursuingly, intent to goad and vex
The long-eared cuddy: He, the cuddy, lays
His long ears back upon his neck, his head
Lowered the while, and out behind him flings
High his indignant heels, at once to keep
That hurly-burly of tormentors off,
And rid his back of that insulting rider.

Unconscious boyhood! Oh! the perils near
Of luring Pleasures! In the evening shade,
Drowsy reclining, in my dream I saw
A comely youth, with wanton flowing curls,
Chase down the sunlit vale a glittering flight
Of winged creatures, some like birds, and some
Like butterflies, and moths of marvellous size
And beauty, purple-ruffed, and spotted rich
With velvet tippets, and their wings like flame—
Onward they drew him to a coming cloud,
With skirts of vapoury gold, but steaming dense
And dark behind, close gathering from the ground:
And on and in he went, in heedless chase.
And straight those skirts curled inward, and became
Part of the gloom: Compacted, solid, black,
It has him in, and it will keep him there.
The cloud stood still a space, as if to give
Time for the acting of some doom within,
Ominous, silent, grim. It moved again,
Tumultuous stirred, and broke in seams and flaws,
And gave me glimpses of its inner womb:
Outdarting forkèd tongues, and brazen fins,
Blue web-winged vampire-bats, and harpy faces,
And dragon crests, and vulture heads obscene,
I there beheld: Fierce were their levelled looks,
As if inflicted on some victim. Who
That victim was, I saw not. But are these
The painted Pleasures which that youth pursued
Adown the vale? How cruel changed! But where,
And what is he? Is he their victim there?
Heavy the cloud went passing by. From out
Its further end I saw that young man come,
Worn and dejected; specks and spots of dirt
Were on his face, and round his sunken eyes;
Hollow his cheeks, lean were his bony brows;
And lank and clammy were the locks that once
Played curling round his neck: The Passions there
Have done their work on him. With trembling limbs,
And stumbling as he went, he sate him down,
With folded arms, upon a sombre hill,
Apart from men, and from his father’s house,
That wept from him; and, sitting there, he looked
With heavy-laden eyes down on the ground.
But the night fell, and hid him from my view.

In yonder sheltered nook of nibbled sward,
Beside the wood, a gipsy band are camped;
And there they’ll sleep the summer night away.
By stealthy holes, their ragged tawny brood
Creep through the hedges, in their pilfering quest
Of sticks and pales, to make their evening fire.
Untutored things, scarce brought beneath the laws
And meek provisions of this ancient State!
Yet, is it wise, with wealth and power like hers,
And such resources of good government,
To let so many of her sons grow up
In untaught darkness and consecutive vice?
True, we are jealous free, and hate constraint,
And every cognisance o’er private life;
Yet, not to name a higher principle,
’Twere but an institution of police,
Due to society, preventative
Of crime, the cheapest and the best support
Of order, right, and law, that not one child,
In all this realm of ours, should be allowed
To grow up uninstructed for this life,
And for the next. Were every child State-claimed,
Laid hold of thus, and thus prepared to be
A proper member of society,
What founts of vice, with all their issuing streams,
Might thus be closed for ever, and at once!
Good propagating good, so far as man
Can work with God. Oh! this is the great work
To change our moral world, and people Heaven.

Would we had Christian statesmen to devise,
And shape, and work it out! Our liberties
Have limits and abatements manifold;
And soon the national will, which makes restraint
Part of its freedom, oft the soundest part,
Would recognise the wisdom of the plan,
Arming the state with full authority
For such an institute of renovation.
This work achieved at home, with what a large
Consistent exercise of power, and right
To hope the blessing, should we then go forth,
Pushing into the dark of Heathen worlds
The crystal frontiers of the invading Light,
The Gospel Light! The glad submitting Earth
Would cry, Behold, their own land is a land
Of perfect living light—how beautiful
Upon the mountains are their blessed feet!

Through yonder meadow comes the milk-maid’s song,
Clear, but not blithe, a melancholy chaunt,
With dying falls monotonous; for youth
Affects the dark and sad: Her ditty tells
Of captive lorn, or broken-hearted maid,
Left of her lover, but in dream thrice dreamt
Warned of his fate, when, with his fellow-crew
Of ghastly sailors on benighted seas
He clings to some black, wet, and slippery rock,
Soon to be washed away; what time their ship,
Driven on the whirlpool’s wheel, is sent below,
And ground upon the millstones of the sea.
The song has ceased. Up the dim elmy lane
The damsel comes. But at its leafy mouth
The one dear lad has watched her entering in,
And with her now comes softly side by side.
But oft he plucks a leaf from off the hedge,
For lack of words, in bashful love sincere;
Till, in his innocent freedom bolder grown,
He crops a dewy gowan from the path,
And greatly daring flings it at her cheek.
Close o’er the pair, along the green arcade,
Now hid, now seen against the evening sky,
The wavering, circling, sudden-wheeling bat
Plays little Cupid, blind enough for that,
And fitly fickle in his flights to be
The very Boy-god’s self. Where’er may lie
The power of arrows with the golden tips,
That silent lad is smit, nor less that girl
Is cleft of heart: Be this the token true:—
Next Sabbath morn, when o’er the pasture hills
Barefoot she comes to church, with Bible wrapped
In clean white napkin, and the sprig of mint
And southernwood laid duly in the leaves,
And down she sits beside the burn to wash
Her feet, and don her stockings and her shoes,
Before she come unto the House of Prayer,
With all her reverence of the Day, she’ll cast
(Forgive the simple thing!) her eye askance
Into the mirror of the glassy pool,
And give her ringlets the last taking touch,
For him who flung the gowan at her cheek
In that soft twilight of the elmy lane.

Pensive the setting Day, whether, as now
Cloudless it fades away, or far is seen,
In long and level parallels of light,
Purple and liquid yellow, barred with clouds,
Far in the twilight West, seen through some deep
Embrowned grove of venerable trees,
Whose pillared stems, apart, but regular,
Stand off against the sky: In such a grove,
At such an hour, permitted eyes might see
Angels, majestic Shapes, walking the earth,
Holding mild converse for the good of man.

Day melts into the West, another flake
Of sweet blue Time into the Eternal Past!

Dumfries, May 18, 1846.

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