able. Curious enough: That round Globe put into that round Drum, to touch it at the ends and all round, it is precisely as if you clapt 2 into the inside of 3, not a jot more, not a jot less wonder at it, O Francia; for in fact it is a thing to make one pause! Old Greek Archimedeses, Pythagorases, dusky Indians, old nearly as the hills, detected such things; and they have got across into Paraguay, into this brain of thine, thou happy Francia. How is it too, that the Almighty Maker's Planets run, in those heavenly spaces, in paths which are conceivable in thy poor human head as Sections of a Cone? The thing thou conceivest as an Ellipsis, the Almighty Maker has set his Planets to roll in that. Clear proof, which neither Loyola nor Usandwonto can contravene, that Thou too art denizen of this Universe; that Thou too, in some inconceivable manner, wert present at the Council of the Gods!-Faint smatterings of such things Francia did learn in Tucuman. Endless heavy fodderings of Jesuit theology, poured on him and round him by the wagonload, incessantly, and year after year, he did not learn; but left flying there as shot-rubbish. On the other hand, some slight inkling of human grammatical vocables, especially of French vocables, seems probable. French vocables; bodily garment of the Encyclopédie and Gospel according to Volney, Jean-Jacques and Company; of infinite import to Francia! Nay is it not, in some sort, beautiful to see the sacred flame of ingenuous human curiosity, love of knowledge, awakened, amid the damp somnolent vapours, real and metaphorical, the damp tropical poison-jungles, and fat Lethean stupefactions and entanglements, even in the heart of a poor Paraguay Creole? Sacred flame, no bigger yet than that of a farthing rushlight, and with nothing but secondhand French class-books in Science, and in Politics and Morals nothing but the Raynals and Rousseaus, to feed it :—an ill-fed, lank-quavering, most blue-coloured, almost ghastly-looking flame; but a needful one, a kind of sacred one even that! Thou shalt love knowledge, search what is the truth of this God's Universe; thou art privileged and bound to love it, to search for it, in Jesuit Tucuman, in all places that the sky covers; and shalt try even Volneys for help, if there be no other help! This poor blue-coloured inextinguishable flame in the soul of Rodriguez Francia, there as it burns better or worse, in many figures, through the whole life of him, is very notable to me. Blue flame though it be, it has to burnup considerable quantities of poisonous lumber from the general face of Paraguay; and singe the profound impenetrable forestjungle, spite of all its brambles and lianas, into a very black condition,-intimating that there shall be decease and removal on the part of said forest-jungle; peremptory removal; that the blessed Sunlight shall again look-in upon his cousin Earth, tyrannously hidden from him for so many centuries now! Courage, Rodriguez! Rodriguez, indifferent to such remote considerations, successfully addicts himself to law-pleadings, and general private studies, in the City of Assumpcion. We have always understood he was one of the best Advocates, perhaps the very best, and what is still more, the justest that ever took briefs in that country. This the Robertsonian Reign of Terror itself is willing to admit, nay repeatedly asserts, and impresses on us. He was so just and true, while a young man; gave such divine prognostics of a life of nobleness; and then, in his riper years, so belied all that! Shameful to think of: he bade fair, at one time, to be a friend-of-humanity of the first water; and then gradually, hardened by political success and love of power, he became a mere ravenous ghoul, or solitary thief in the night; stealing the constitutional palladiums from their parliamenthouses, and executed upwards of forty persons! Sad to consider what men and friends-of-humanity will turn to! For the rest, it is not given to this or as yet to any editor, till a Biography arrive from Paraguay, to shape-out with the smallest clearness, a representation of Francia's existence as an Assumpcion Advocate; the scene is so distant, the conditions of it so unknown. Assumpcion City, near three hundred years old now, lies in free-and-easy fashion on the left bank of the Parana River; embosomed among fruit-forests, rich tropical umbrage; thick wood round it everywhere,—which serves for defence too against the Indians. Approach by which of the various roads you will, it is through miles of solitary shady avenue, shutting-out the sun's glare; over-canopying, as with grateful green awning, the loose sand-highway,—where, in the early part of this Century (date undiscoverable in those intricate Volumes), Mr. Parish Robertson, advancing on horse back, met one cart driven by a smart brown girl in red bodice, with long black hair, not unattractive to look upon; and for a space of twelve miles, no other articulate-speaking thing whatever.7 The people of that profuse climate live in a careless abundance, troubling themselves about few things; build what wooden carts, hide-beds, mud-brick houses are indispensable; import what of ornamental lies handiest abroad; exchanging for it Paraguay tea in sewed goatskins. Riding through the town of Santa Fé, with Parish Robertson, at three in the afternoon, you will find the entire population just risen from its siesta ; slipshod, half-buttoned; sitting in its front verandas open to the street, eating pumpkins with voracity,―sunk to the ears in pumpkins; imbibing the grateful saccharine juices, in a freeand-easy way. They look up at the sound of your hoofs, not without good humour. Frondent trees parasol the streets,— thanks to Nature and the Virgin. You will be welcome at their tertulias, a kind of 'swarrie,' as the Flunky says, 'consisting of flirtation and the usual trimmings: swarrie on the table ' about seven o'clock.' Before this, the whole population, it is like, has gone to bathe promiscuously, and cool and purify itself in the Parana: promiscuously; but you have all got linen bathing-garments, and can swash about with some decency; a great relief to the human tabernacle in those climates. your tertulia, it is said, the Andalusian eyes, still bright to this tenth or twelfth generation, are destructive, seductive enough, and argue a soul that would repay cultivating. The beautiful half-savages; full of wild sheet-lightning, which might be made continuously luminous! Tertulia well over, you sleep on hidestretchers, perhaps here and there on a civilised mattress, within doors or on the housetops. - At In the damp flat country parts, where the mosquitoes abound, you sleep on high stages, mounted on four poles, forty feet above the ground, attained by ladders; so high, blessed be the Virgin, no mosquito can follow to sting,-it is a blessing of the Virgin or some other. You sleep there, in an indiscriminate arrangement, each in his several ponche or blanket-cloak; with some saddle, deal-box, wooden log, or the like, under your head. For bed-tester is the canopy of everlasting blue; for 7 Letters on Paraguay. night-lamp burns Canopus in his infinite spaces; mosquitoes cannot reach you, if it please the Powers. And rosy-fingered Morn, suffusing the east with sudden red and gold, and other flame-heraldry of swift-advancing Day, attenuates all dreams; and the Sun's first level light-volley shears away sleep from living creatures everywhere; and living men do then awaken on their four-post stage there, in the Pampas,—and might begin with prayer if they liked, one fancies! There is an altar decked on the horizon's edge yonder, is there not; and a cathedral wide enough?-How, over-night, you have defended yourself against vampires, is unknown to this Editor. The Gaucho population, it must be owned, is not yet fit for constitutional liberty. They are a rude people; lead a drowsy life, of ease and sluttish abundance,—one shade, and but one, above a dog's life, which is defined as ‘ease and scarcity.' The arts are in their infancy; and not less the virtues. For equipment, clothing, bedding, household furniture and general outfit of every kind, those simple populations depend much on the skin of the cow; making of it most things wanted, lasso, bolas, ship-cordage, rimmings of cart-wheels, spatterdashes, beds and house-doors. In country places they sit on the skull of the COW: General Artigas was seen, and spoken with, by one of the Robertsons, sitting among field-officers, all on cow-skulls, toasting stripes of beef, and dictating to three secretaries at once. '8 They sit on the skull of the cow in country places; nay they heat themselves, and even burn lime, by igniting the carcass of the cow. One art they seem to have perfected, and one only,—that of riding. Astley's and Ducrow's must hide their head, and all glories of Newmarket and Epsom dwindle to extinction, in comparison of Gaucho horsemanship. Certainly if ever Centaurs lived upon the earth, these are of them. They stick on their horses as if both were one flesh; galloping where there seems hardly path for an ibex; leaping like kangaroos, and flourishing their nooses and bolases the while. They can whirl themselves round under the belly of the horse, in cases of warstratagem, and stick fast, hanging-on by the mere great toe and heel. You think it is a drove of wild horses galloping up : on a sudden, with wild scream, it becomes a troup of Centaurs 8 Letters on Paraguay. with pikes in their hands. Nay, they have the skill, which most of all transcends Newmarket, of riding on horses that are not fed; and can bring fresh speed and alacrity out of a horse which, with you, was on the point of lying down. To ride on three horses with Ducrow they would esteem a small feat: to ride on the broken-winded fractional part of one horse, that is the feat! Their huts abound in beef, in reek also, and rubbish ; excelling in dirt most places that human nature has anywhere inhabited. Poor Gauchos! They drink Paraguay tea, sucking it up in succession, through the same tin pipe, from one common skillet. They are hospitable, sooty, leathery, lying, laughing fellows; of excellent talent in their sphere. They have stoicism, though ignorant of Zeno; nay stoicism coupled with real gaiety of heart. Amidst their reek and wreck, they laugh loud, in rough jolly banter; they twang, in a plaintive manner, rough love-melodies on a kind of guitar; smoke infinite tobacco; and delight in gambling and ardent spirits, ordinary refuge of voracious empty souls. For the same reason, and a better, they delight also in Corpus-Christi ceremonies, mass-chantings, and devotional performances. These men are fit to be drilled into something! Their lives stand there like empty capacious bottles, calling to the heavens and the earth, and all Dr. Francias who may pass that way: "Is there nothing to put into us, then? Nothing but nomadic idleness, Jesuit superstition, rubbish, reek, and dry stripes of tough beef?" Ye unhappy Gauchos,—yes, there is something other, there are several things other, to put into you! But withal, you will observe, the seven devils have first to be put out of you: Idleness, lawless Brutalness, Darkness, Falseness-seven devils or more. And the way to put something into you is, alas, not so plain at present! Is it,―alas, on the whole, is it not perhaps to lay good horsewhips lustily upon you, and cast out these seven devils as a preliminary? How Francia passed his days in such a region, where philosophy, as is too clear, was at the lowest ebb? Francia, like Quintus Fixlein, had 'perennial fire-proof joys, namely employments.' He had much Law-business, a great and everincreasing reputation as a man at once skilful and faithful in the management of causes for men. Then, in his leisure hours, he had his Volneys, Raynals; he had secondhand scientific |