"And who and what is that," he said,—"sitting a little apart there,—that strange, wild-looking girl?"
This time he put the real question he wanted answered;—the other two were asked at random, as masks for the third.
The lady-teacher's face changed;—one would have said she was frightened or troubled. She looked at the girl doubtfully, as if she might hear the master's question and its answer. But the girl did not look up;—she was winding a gold chain about her wrist, and then uncoiling it, as if in a kind of reverie.
Miss Darley drew close to the master and placed her hand so as to hide her lips. "Don't look at her as if we were talking about her," she whispered softly;—"that is Elsie Venner."
MEXICO.
A certain immortal fool, who had, like most admitted fools, great wisdom, once said, that the number of truces between the Christians and Saracens in Palestine made an old man of him; for he had known three of them, so that he must be at least one hundred and fifty years old. The saying occurs in a romance, to be sure, but one which is not half so romantic as the best-accredited decade of Titus Livius, and is quite as authentic as most of what Sir Archibald Alison says, when he writes on the United States.
What Palestine and the Crusades were to the witty son of Witless, Mexico and her politics are to moderns, not even excepting the predestined devourers of the Aztec land, who ought to know something of the country they purpose bringing within the full light of civilization through the aid of slaughter and slavery. There are some myriads of "Americans of the North" yet living, and who entertain not the remotest idea of dying, who remember Mexico as a Spanish dependency quite as submissive to Viceroy Iturrigaray as Cuba is now to Captain-General Serrano; and who have seen her both an Empire and a Republic, and the theatre of more revolutions than England has known since the days of the Octarchy. The mere thought of the changes that have occurred there bewilders the mind; and the inhabitants of orderly countries, whether that order be the consequence of despotism or of constitutionalism, wonder that society should continue to exist in a country where government appears to be unknown.
Less than fifty years cover the time between the appearance of Hidalgo and that of Miramon; and between the dates of the leaderships of the two men, Mexico has had an army of generals, of whom little is now known beyond their names. Hidalgo, Morelos, Mina, Bravo, Iturbide, Guerrero, Bustamente, Victoria, Pedraza, Gomez Farias, Paredes, and Herrera,—such are the names that were once familiar to our countrymen in connection with Mexican affairs. We have now a new race of Mexican chiefs,—Alvarez, Comonfort, Zuloaga, Uraga, Juarez, Vidaurri, Haro y Tamariz, Degollado, and Miramon. Some of these last-named chiefs might, perhaps, be classed with those first named, from years and services; but whatever of political importance they have belongs to the present time; and the most important man of them all, Miramon, is said to be very young, and was not born until many years after the last vestiges of the vice-regal rule had been removed. Santa Aña, but for his shifting round so often,—now an absolute ruler, and then an absolute runaway, yet ever contriving to get the better of his antagonists, whether they happen to be clever Mexicans or dull Americans,—might be called the isthmus that connects the first generation of leaders with that which now misleads his country. Santa Aña's public life synchronizes with the independence of Mexico of foreign rule, and his career can hardly be pronounced at an end. It would be of the nature of a newspaper coincidence, were he to know his "last of earth" at the very time when, by all indications, Mexico stands in greater danger of losing her national life than she has known since the day when Barradas was sent to play the part of Cortés, but proved himself not quite equal to that of Narvaez. Santa Aña owed much of his power to his victory over the Spaniards in 1830, though pestilence did half the work to his hand; and perhaps no better evidence of the hatred of the Mexicans for Spanish rule can be adduced, than the hold which he has maintained over their minds, in consequence of the part he took in overthrowing that rule, and in rendering its return impossible.
Provoked by the anarchy which has so long existed in Mexico, American writers, and writers of other countries, have sometimes contrasted the condition of that nation with the order that prevailed there during the Spanish ascendency, and it is not uncommon to hear Americans say that the worst thing that ever happened to the Mexicans was the overthrow of that ascendency. They forget that the causes of Mexican anarchy were of Spanish creation, and that it must have exhibited itself, all the same, if Mexico had not achieved her independence. The shock caused by the seizure of the Spanish throne by Napoleon I. led to that war against the Spaniards in Mexico which prematurely broke out in 1810, and which was of the nature of a Jacquerie, but which would have been completely successful, had Hidalgo been equal to his position. It had been intended that the blow should be struck against the Gachupines,—European Spaniards, or persons of pure Spanish blood,—who were partisans of Spain, whether Spain were ruled by Bourbons or Bonapartes; and it was to have been delivered by the Creoles, who remained faithful to the House of Bourbon. Circumstances caused the Indian races to commence the war, and this was fatal to the original project, as it led to the union of both Spaniards and Creoles against the followers of Hidalgo. The army with which Calleja overthrew the forces of Hidalgo was an army of Creoles. It was composed of the very men who would have been foremost in putting down the Spaniards, if the Indians had remained quiet. From that time dates the disorder of Mexico, which has ever since continued, though at intervals the country has known short periods of comparative repose.