in the Argentine News of Buenos-Ayres, No. 813. We select some passages; studying to abate the nasal tone a little; to reduce, if possible, the Argentine English under the law of grammar. It is the worst translation in the world, and does poor Manuel Perez one knows not what injustice. This Funeral Discourse has much surprised' the Able Editor, it seems ;has led him perhaps to ask, or be readier for asking, Whether all that confused loud litanying about 'reign of terror,' and so forth, was not possibly of a rather long-eared nature?

'Amid the convulsions of revolution,' says the Reverend Manuel, 'the Lord, looking down with pity on Paraguay, raised up Don José Gaspar Francia for its deliverance. And when, in the words of my Text, the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer to the children of Israel, who delivered them.'

'What measures did not his Excellency devise, what labours undergo, to preserve peace in the Republic at home, and place it in an attitude to command respect from abroad! His first care was directed to obtain supplies of Arms, and to discipline Soldiers. To all that would import arms he held out the inducement of exemption from duty, and the permission to export in return whatever produce they preferred. An abundant supply of excellent arms was, by these means, obtained. I am lost in wonder to think how this great man could attend to such a multiplicity of things! He applied himself to the study of the military art; and, in a short time, taught the exercise, and directed military evolutions like the skilfulest veteran. Often have I seen his Excellency go up to a recruit, and show him by example how to take aim at the target. Could any Paragueno think it other than honourable to carry a musket, when his Dictator taught him how to manage it? The cavalry-exercise too, though it seems to require a man at once robust and experienced in horsemanship, his Excellency, as you know, did himself superintend; at the head of his squadrons he charged and manoeuvered, as if bred to it; and directed them with an energy and vigour which infused his own martial spirit into these troops.'

'What evils do not the people suffer from Highwaymen !' exclaims his Reverence, a little farther on; 'violence, plunder, murder, are crimes familiar to these malefactors. The inacessible mountains and wide deserts in this Republic seem to offer impunity to such men. Our Dictator succeeded in striking such a terror into them that they entirely disappeared, seeking safety in a change of life. His Excellency saw that the manner of inflicting the punishment was more efficacious than even the punishment itself; and on this principle he acted. Whenever a robber could be seized, he was led to the nearest Guardhouse (Guardia); a summary trial took place; and straightway, so soon as he had made confession, he was shot. These means proved effectual. Ere

long the Republic was in such security, that, we may say, a child might have travelled from the Uruguay to the Parana without other protection than the dread which the Supreme Dictator had inspired.'—This is saying something, your Reverence!

'But what is all this compared to the demon of Anarchy? Oh,' exclaims his simple Reverence, 'Oh, my friends, would I had the talent to paint to you the miseries of a people that fall into anarchy! And was not our Republic on the very eve of this? Yes, brethren.'-'It behoved his Excellency to be prompt; to smother the enemy in his cradle! He did so. He seized the leaders; brought to summary trial, they were convicted of high treason against the country. What a struggle now, for his Excellency, between the law of duty, and the voice of feeling'-if feeling to any extent there were! 'I,' exclaims his Reverence, am confident that had the doom of imprisonment on those persons seemed sufficient for the State's peace, his Excellency never would have ordered their execution.' It was unavoidable; nor was it avoided; it was done! 'Brethren, should not I hesitate, lest it be a profanation of the sacred place I now occupy, if I seem to approve sanguinary measures in opposition to the mildness of the Gospel? Brethren, no. God himself approved the conduct of Solomon in putting Joab and Adonijah to death.' Life is sacred, thinks his Reverence; but there is something more sacred still: woe to him who does not know that withal!

Alas, your Reverence, Paraguay has not yet succeeded in abolishing capital punishment, then? But indeed neither has Nature, anywhere that I hear of, yet succeeded in abolishing it. Act with the due degree of perversity, you are sure enough of being violently put to death, in hospital or highway, -by dyspepsia, delirium tremens, or stuck through by the kindled rage of your fellow-men! What can the friend of humanity do? -Twaddle in Exeter-hall or elsewhere, 'till he become a bore to us,' and perhaps worse! An Advocate in Arras once gaveup a good judicial appointment, and retired into frugality and privacy, rather than doom one culprit to die by law. The name of this Advocate, let us mark it well, was Maximilien Robespierre. There are sweet kinds of twaddle that have a deadly virulence of poison concealed in them; like the sweetness of sugar-of-lead. Were it not better to make just laws, think you, and then execute them strictly,—as the gods still do?

'His Excellency next directed his attention to purging the State from another class of enemies,' says Perez in the Incarnation Church; 'the peculating Tax-gatherers, namely. Vigilantly detecting their frauds, he made them refund for what was past, and took precautions against

the like in future; all their accounts were to be handed in, for his examination, once every year.'

'The habit of his Excellency when he delivered-out articles for the supply of the public; that prolix and minute counting of things apparently unworthy of his attention,—had its origin in the same motive. I believe that he did so less from a want of confidence in the indviduals lately appointed for this purpose, than from a desire to show them with what delicacy they should proceed. Hence likewise his ways, in scrupulously examining every piece of artisans' workmanship.'

'Republic of Paraguay, how art thou indebted to the toils, the vigils and cares of our Perpetual Dictator! It seemed as if this extraordinary man were endowed with ubiquity, to attend to all thy wants and exigences. Whilst in his closet, he was traversing thy frontiers to place thee in an attitude of security. What devastation did not those inroads of Indians from the Chaco occasion to the inhabitants of Rio-Abajo ! Ever and anon there reached Assumpcion tidings of the terror and affliction caused by their incursions. Which of us hoped that evils so widespread, ravages so appalling, could be counteracted? Our Dictator nevertheless did devise effectual ways of securing that part of the Republic.

'Four respectable Fortresses with competent garrisons have been the impregnable barrier which has restrained the irruptions of those ferocious Savages. Inhabitants of Rio-Abajo! rest tranquil in your homes; you are a portion of the People whom the Lord confided to the care of our Dictator; you are safe.'

'The precautions and wise measures he adopted to repel force, and drive-back the Savages to the north of the Republic; the Fortresses of Climpo, of San Carlos de Apa, placed on the best footing for defence; the orders and instructions furnished to the Villa de la Concepcion,— secured that quarter of the Republic against attack from any.

'The great Wall, ditch and fortress, on the opposite bank of the River Parana; the force and judicious arrangement of the troops distributed over the interior in the south of our Republic, have commanded the respect of its enemies in that quarter.'

'The beauty, the symmetry and good taste displayed in the building of cities convey an advantageous idea of their inhabitants,' continues Perez: 'Thus thought Caractacus, King of the Angles,'—thus think most persons! 'His Excellency, glancing at the condition of the Capital of the Republic, saw a city in disorder and without police; streets without regularity, houses built according to the caprice of their owners.'

But enough, O Perez; for it becomes too nasal! Perez, with a confident face, asks in fine, Whether all these things do not clearly prove to men and Gauchos of sense, that Dictator Francia was 'the deliverer whom the Lord raised up to deliver Paraguay from its enemies'?-Truly, O Perez, the benefits of

him seem to have been considerable.

Undoubtedly a man

'sent by Heaven,'- -as all of us are! Nay, it may be, the benefit of him is not even yet exhausted, even yet entirely become visible. Who knows but, in unborn centuries, Paragueno men will look back to their lean iron Francia, as men do in such cases to the one veracious person, and institute considerations! Oliver Cromwell, dead two-hundred years, does yet speak; nay, perhaps now first begins to speak. The meaning and meanings of the one true man, never so lean and limited, starting-up direct from Nature's heart, in this bewildered Gaucho world, gone far away from Nature, are endless!

The Messrs. Robertson are very merry on this attempt of Francia's to rebuild on a better plan the City of Assumpcion. The City of Assumpcion, full of tropical vegetation and 'permanent hedges, the deposits of nuisance and vermin,'13 has no pavement, no straightness of streets; the sandy thoroughfare in some quarters is torn by the rain into gullies, impassable with convenience to any animal but a kangaroo. Francia, after meditation, decides on having it remodelled, paved, straightened,—irradiated with the image of the one regular man. Robertson laughs to see a Dictator, sovereign ruler, straddling about, 'taking observations with his theodolite,' and so forth: O Robertson, if there was no other man that could observe with a theodolite? Nay, it seems farther, the improvement of Assumpcion was attended, once more, with the dreadfulest tyrannies: peaceable citizens dreaming no harm, no active harm to any soul, but mere peaceable passive dirt and irregularity to all souls, were ordered to pull down their houses which happened to stand in the middle of streets; forced (under rustle of the gallows) to draw their purses, and rebuild them elsewhere! It is horrible. Nay, they said, Francia's true aim in these improvements, in this cutting-down of the luxuriant 'cross hedges' and architectural monstrosities, was merely to save himself from being shot, from under cover, as he rode through the place. It may be so: but Assumpcion is now an improved paved City, much squarer in the corners (and with the planned capacity, it seems, of growing ever squarer14); passable with convenience not to kangaroos only, but to wooden bullock-carts and all vehicles and animals.

Indeed our Messrs. Robertson find something comic as well as tragic in Dictator Francia; and enliven their running shriek, all through this Reign of Terror, with a pleasant vein of conventional satire. One evening, for example, a Robertson being about to leave Paraguay for England, and having waited upon Francia to make the parting compliments, Francia, to the Robertson's extreme astonishment, orders-in a large bale of goods, orders them to be opened on the table there: Tobacco, ponchocloth, and other produce of the country, all of first-rate quality, and with the prices ticketed. These goods this astonished Robertson is to carry to the Bar of the House of Commons,' and there to say, in such fashion and phraseology as a native may know to be suitable: Mr. Speaker,-Dr. Francia is Dictator of Paraguay, a country of tropical fertility and 100,000 square miles in extent, producing these commodities, at these prices. With nearly all foreign nations he declines altogether to trade; but with the English, such is his notion of them, he is willing and desirous to trade. These are his commodities, in endless quantity; of this quality, at these prices. He wants arms, for his part. What say you, Mr. Speaker?"- -Sure enough, our Robertson, arriving at the Bar of the House of Commons' with such a message, would have cut an original figure! Not to the House of Commons' was this message properly addressed; but to the English Nation; which Francia, idiot-like, supposed to be somehow represented, and made accessible and addressable in the House of Commons. It was a strange imbecility in any Dictator!—The Robertson, we find accordingly, did not take this bale of goods to the Bar of the House of Commons; nay, what was far worse, he did not, owing to accidents, go to England at all, or bring any arms back to Francia at all: hence, indeed, Francia's unreasonable detestation of him, hardly to be restrained within the bounds of common politeness! A man who said he would do, and then did not do, was at no time a kind of man admirable to Francia. Large sections of this Reign of Terror are a sort of unmusical sonata, or free duet with variations, to this text: "How unadmirable a hidemerchant that does not keep his word!"-"How censurable, not to say ridiculous and imbecile, the want of common politeness in a Dictator!"

Francia was a man that liked performance: and sham-per