that, it is desirable to make our abodes as clean | THE CAPTURE AND RE-CAPTURE OF MEXICO. and clear of disease as possible the cholera will be quite enough of itself. Now we have no wish to waste words in reproaches about the past, provoking as it is to see the government of this great country unable to cope with notorious nuisances of the basest and squalidest kind-the rulers of the British empire slinking away before knackers and low lodging-house keepers; but our want of earlier preparation should at least be in part expiated by the utmost exertion to do what can be done now. Some of us must die of this coming cholera; but do not let our officials leave the public unprepared for another. The least they can do is to clear the path of the sanatory commissioners, and fill their hands with power sufficient for the occasion.-Spectator, 30 Oct. THE last account from Mexico, certainly not an official one, but creditable enough to alarm even the most sanguine of the democratic party in America, represents General Scott, after having fought his way from the coast to the vicinity of the capital, and from that capital through forts and entrenchments into the city itself, and through its streets and barricades to the possession of its citadel and public square, to have been driven back out of the city by an uprising of the mob. This is not an unusual fate of generals, who triumph over regular forces and scientific military resistance, but are worsted by a multitude of ragamuffins, armed with paving-stones and popular fury. This was nearly the fate of the French at Naples and Madrid. The leperos of Mexico have been compared to the lazzaroni of Naples, the laziness of the Neapolitan being in them thickened with Indian listlessness. The plunder of the cathedral and the profanation of its walls are said to have roused the leperos, who achieved what Santa Anna failed in, viz., drove the Americans out of the city. THE POST BETWEEN PARIS AND LONDON. IT may occasion some surprise that it should remain for the Morning Chronicle, at this day, to It is needless to remark, that such successful suggest such an acceleration of the public post-office resistance would prove the signal for the Mexican communication between London and Paris as should population, hitherto wavering and timid, to rise and enable it to keep pace with private communications. engage in a general though desultory war. Already At present the reverse is the case, to a remarkable the deputies of the more central and important degree. The slowness of the post acts as a pro-states had adjourned congress to the town of Queretection to certain private postmasters who carry on taro. A great portion of the army will flock to a brisk business; and people whose affairs require a rapid interchange of letters depend on such private channels. The despatches for the newspapers are daily delivered in London fifteen or even twenty hours before the letters transmitted through the post-office. And from the more dilatory habits of the French post-office, the case is yet worse in Paris; the letters which in London would be delivered early in the morning being detained in the office till past noon. · We are now speaking of the ordinary condition of things; but occasionally the delay will be still greater as when a Sunday intervenes. An instance occurred this week in our own experience; a letter written in Paris on Thursday the 21st, quite in time to have been brought that night to London, but too late for the leisurely proceedings of the postoffice, reached us on Monday the 25th. We have before had reason to complain of the delays interposed by the bungling and espionage of the German post; but here we find a nearer neighbor at fault, and our own office participating in the offence. them, and as regular strategic resistance ceases with the command of Santa Anna, a system of guerilla and irregular warfare would no doubt commence, which nothing but gigantic efforts and expenditure on the part of the Americans, with a long lapse of time and success, could finally overcome. Such are the tactics of the Mexicans, such the evident determination of their leading men, and apparently of the priesthood, which throughout the country holds lieu of all other links and institutions and government. That this feeling and resolve is general, and not to be duped or trifled with, is pretty evident from the conduct of Santa Anna, who no doubt returned to Mexico with the idea of concluding an agreement with the Americans, and was allowed by them to pass their blockade on this very understanding. But Santa Anna, surrounded by his army, and watched by the deputies of congress, could do nothing else than fight manfully, and consent merely to such conditions of peace as Mr. Trist could not listen to. This envoy demanded no less than to cut ten degrees off of the northern extremity of Mexico, which, with the seven degrees of the Oregon wrested from England, forms a very pretty empire, thus making indeed a second United States on the Pacific. The peninsula of California was of course The Chronicle announces that the South-eastern Railway Company is about to send a deputation to Paris, to consult with the directors of the French Railway as to the mode of facilitating the communication between the two capitals. Of course the authorities of the two post-offices will seek to be parties to the consultation. If a rapid post and two to be included. The Mexicans, however, at once mails a day are necessary between London and Edinburgh, they are more necessary between London and Paris; and it would be quite possible to have a transmission of letters posted and delivered within sixteen hours. It should be remembered, that mere rapidity of transmission is not the only desideratum; it is most desirable that the letters of commercial men should be received at least as soon as those which reach any other class in the country; and as to the government, it ought to secure to itself absolute priority of information as a standing rule-not by keeping back the intelligence of private persons, but by outstripping it.-Spectator, 30 Oct [refused to cede New Mexico, the Spanish population of which had shown the greatest aversion to American rule, the greatest resistance to their arms. The Mexicans declared they would not give up such a province to slavery and the United States. To this they were the more spirited, from their sentiments being echoed by all the people of the northern states of the Union, who are at this moment as much alarmed at the annexation of New Mexico, as they were a year or two ago at the annexation of Texas. There seems indeed no end to the prospect of southern and slave states, and to the utter destruction of all balance between northern and southern influences. Mr. Trist moreover offered a high price for the Californians; but the Mexicans | Bung's artillery is at Todododos. A deserter from refused to cede more of these than the territory and the enemy came in yesterday. He says that Presbay of San Francisco, which by the course of its ident Santa Anna received a twenty-eight pounder river is naturally connected with the Oregon, and through his body, after which he renewed the acforms indeed its obvious seaport. So small a con- tion. cession did not satisfy Mr. Trist. And yet in so "The bombardment of Los Leperos is not concritical a position was the American army, that the firmed. Santa Anna received a congreve-rocket in envoy asked for a truce of forty-eight days to allow the left knee there, and has ordained the formation of his referring to his government touching the pos- of a similar corps. I shut up, as the courier is sibility of its desisting from its claims over the dis- going. puted territory between the Bravo and the Nueces. "The legion of Saint Nicholas, under O'Scraggs, Great Britain has wisely abstained from inter-performed prodigies of valor on both sides. Plungference as arbitrator, which indeed was impossible. ing into the thickest of the mêlée at Pickapockatickl, It is evident, that the best chance which the Mex-O'Scraggs engaged personally with General Ragg, icans have of obtaining favorable terms, consists in whose pocket-handkerchief, after a severe struggle, the support which their offers will obtain from the he succeeded in carrying off. It has been hung up anti-slavery party in the United States. But in in the cathedral of Mexico, amongst the other colorder to this party preserving its influence, it is ors taken in the campaign. necessary that the president should be unable to appeal to any excitable feeling. If the English were supposed to under-work the Mexicans, this would call up the spirit of even the Yankees against them. Or, if the Mexicans should inflict any signal defeat or disgrace on the American arms, then too President Polk might appeal to popular feeling to support him in outrageous war. Bating these causes of excitement, the Americans will probably "Captain Scraggs used the snuff-box on the last weary of expenditure, and turn from the prospect day of his brilliant existence, when he died the death of an interminable, and, should resistance turn to of a hero, being hanged before the American lines, guerillas, an inglorious war. In that case Mexico to the delight of both armies." may have, if not her own, at least a fair frontier and reasonable conditions.-Examiner, 30 Oct. PUNCH'S LATEST FROM MEXICO. THE Blarney Castle has arrived at Liverpool. Her dates are from New York the 15th, Boston the 16th, and the day previous from the seat of She brings specie to the amount of two mil.lions of rupees, and files of the New York papers. The correspondent of the Locofoco says war. "In the engagement at Santos Ladrones, so creditable to both sides, O'Scragg, whose legion was then acting with the American army, had almost taken prisoner Santa Anna, who had both legs shot off by our brave bombardiers; his silver snuff-box, however, was captured out of the general's coat pocket, as he fled from a field where he had covered himself with so much glory. From the Spectator. IRELAND displays an accession in the usual contrast of heterogeneous elements-a turbulent and helpless destitution; a new burst of sectarem bigotry; and a government steadily enlightering its subjects by firm and sage counsels. The great tenant-right meeting at Kilmacthomas, in Galway, was painfully characteristic of the national levity. The meeting was summoned to consider the means of obtaining a law of tenant-right; "General Growdy's division yesterday came up it proved to be a monster meeting, only with a new with the main body of the Mexican force, under pretext; the tenant-right, so called, which the speakGeneral Cabanas, at Rionogo, where the New Or-ers claimed, was really fixity of tenure; and in the leans Picayune informs us that a severe engage- midst of the business, the occasion became a repeal ment took place. Both parties won the victory, meeting for the presentation of an address and some and were repulsed with severe slaughter. Santa" rent" to Mr. John O'Connell ! Anna was present in the action, in the course of which his head was shot off. He subsequently addressed a heart-stirring proclamation to the Mexican nation, in which he described the action of the 27th, which ended in the utter defeat of the Americans, whose victory, however, cost them dear. The new sally of bigotry is a fresh denunciation of the "godless colleges," in the shape of a rescript from the Sacred College at Rome, bearing, unfortunately, the sanction of Pius the Ninth; the Irish colleges are condemned, and the Roman Catholic clergy are enjoined to take no share in promoting "Immediately after their success, they proceeded those institutions. It is possible that the head of to evacuate the town, which they bombarded the the Roman Catholic church is too much bound by next day. The American troops were annihilated the routine of the Sacred College to act with the after a trifling skirmish, in which Santa Anna lost liberality that might have been expected of him. his leg, which was amputated on the spot, before It is to be observed that Pius has hitherto done the retreat of the Mexicans upon Cacapulco. It is nothing which is not orthodox; and he may justly reported that he has yielded the presidency to Gen- ask, whether he might not impair his own usefuleral Nosotros. ness if he were to raise any doubts among the faith"General Whack's brigade is at Sangarbanzos, ful as to his own ecclesiastical infallibility. Besides, hotly pursued by the Mexicans. In this disaster it is to be remembered that the English government the indefatigable Santa Anna was wounded severe- is without any real representative at Rome, and that ly, a cannon-ball from a howitzer taking off his the pontiff is thus left at the mercy of Irish stateright hand. From this place, after the operation, ments touching the colleges. However, in the he wrote a pathetic appeal to the Mexican senate, present stage of the affair, it is not for British minand complained bitterly of the cowardice of Gen-isters to question the course adopted by the head eral Pumpanillas, who was at Nossa Senhora de las Podridas, harassing the flanks of Major Cowitch's Alleghany Rangers. "General Scott was unwell; but it is not true that he has been compelled to take Jalapa. Major of the Roman church; still less is it for them to yield; it is for him to consider what he deems necessary for discipline within the pale of his church it is for them to consider what is good and proper for British subjects. The colleges must go for ward; the Roman Catholics will use them or not as they please. The clergy of the church whose traditional usage enforces views so bigoted have waited upon the lord-lieutenant with a memorial, oddly ascribing the wretched condition of Ireland to the obsolete bigotry of the Protestant rulers, announcing the prospect of more famine in the winter, and asking for more help. Lord Clarendon replied with one of his admirable lectures on the duties of social order, industry, and self-reliance. There is no irrelevance about Lord Clarendon's reproofs: if he does not flatter, it is impossible that any sane mind could take offence at the perfectly decorous, plain, sensible, and benevolent advice which he gives. He tells the Irish, in unmistakable language, that they cannot avoid poverty except by order and industry; and from such a quarter they cannot avoid hearing those salutary truths. AUSTRIA has not only retained possession of Ferrara, but her local commanders manage so ill as to permit outrages on the native Italians. There has been a disturbance, Italian blood has been shed, and probably one of the sufferers belongs to the clergy! Such incidents tend not only to compel the cession of Ferrara, but to strengthen a feeling which gains ground very rapidly-a feeling that the Austrians must be expelled from Italy altogether. THE forbearance of the British in New Zealand has had its natural consequence, in new excesses by the natives; and a continuance of that forbearance seems likely to prolong the suicidal contumacy of the aborigines. The account of the British manoeuvres at Wanganui--the troops marching out every day for a bootless popping at their Parthian enemy, and then retreating every night into the safe shelter of a stockade-is humiliating. Humanity may dictate that undecisive demeanor, but to the barbarians it must look like sheer cowardice; so that their inevitable presuming on our hesitation will stultify our mercy, and eventually cost more blood than the cruelest form of prompt chastisement; already the "philanthropic" policy has been paid for in blood, and it is quite clear that more will have to flow. As our last postscript narrated, and our new accounts make clear, General Scott is or has been in possession of the Mexican capital-and in a scrape. Scott and Santa Anna could not agree on terms of took the great city, killed many people, ruined peace the fighting was renewed; the Yankees for the glazier," and remained in a some of the public buildings, created "ample work "fix"-apparently in want of an intelligible policy, certainly in want of supplies and reinforcements-there are even rumors that they have been driven out again. On the first blush, it would look as if the sovereign citizens of the great republic must be so disgusted with these untoward victories as to refuse further supplies, and to recall the army. But the affair is too serious for that; United States men are not of a temperament to succumb to defeat, and the very extremity of the danger may evoke a national feeling in favor of prosecuting the war. There is trouble in store for all parties. THE various documents relating to the establishment of a Roman Catholic hierarchy in England arrived in London on Tuesday. The Right Reverend Dr. Walsh, heretofore vicar apostolic of the Midland district, is now Archbishop of Westminster; Dr. Wiseman, who it was expected would occupy that position, is to be Bishop of Birmingham. The title of vicar apostolic is to be abolished; and the bishops are to be called after their respective sees-such, for instance, as Bishop of Northampton," the title now held by Dr. Waring. 66 MR. Albany Fonblanque, the editor and registered proprietor of the Examiner newspaper, has been appointed to the office in the statistical department of the Board of Trade vacated by the promotion of Mr. Porter to the post formerly occupied by Mr. Lefevre. Any numbers may be had at 12 cents. The LIVING AGE is published every Saturday, by | twenty dollars, or two dollars each for separate volumes. E. LITTELL & Co., at No. 165 Tremont St., BOSTON. Price 12 cents a number, or six dollars a year in advance. Remittances for any period will be thankfully received and promptly attended to. To insure regularity in mailing the work, remittances and orders should be addressed to the office of publication as above. Twenty dollars will pay for 4 copies for a year. COMPLETE SETS to the end of 1846, making eleven large volumes, are for sale, neatly bound in cloth, for AGENCIES.-The publishers are desirous of making arrangements in all parts of North America, for increas ing the circulation of this work-and for doing this a liberal commission will be allowed to gentlemen who will interest themselves in the business. But it must be understood that in all cases payment in advance is expected. The price of the work is so low that we cannot afford to incur either risk or expense in the collection of debts. LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 187.-11 DECEMBER, 1847. From the Quarterly Review. 1. A Year of Consolation. By MRS. BUTLER, late Fanny Kemble. 2 vols. 12mo. London: 1847. 2. Illustrated Excursions in Italy. By EDWARD LEAR. 2 vols. folio. London: 1847. dence to the lady, the title, "A Year of Consolation," suggests those others accumulative of distress to which it was the antidote. An under tone of woe and mystery pervades the poetic portions of our fair one's volumes, exciting a compassionate curiosity, and vividly contrasting, it must be owned, with the animal spirits and comis WE readily cut the pages of these new books on an old subject; for Heaven forefend that Italy should ever cease to interest, or her siren fascina-joyousness which flash forth in the prose narrative, tion become a fable of the past. To us every touch like sun-beams in a wintry sky. But this is all by original hand awakens some dormant delight, in nature;—she is a poetess-and moreover the every fresh view calls forth some unobserved won- theatre has been her nursery and her playground. der. Italy, whose fair form and pressure defies pen No wonder then that, whenever shadows of the to exhaust, and pencil to more than outline, must past, looming across the Atlantic, darkened her be seen with painter's eye and with poet's feeling, present dream of peace, she poured her sadnessmust be loved for her own sake, and studied in her into the serious vehicle of Il Penseroso, and sought unbeaten by-ways, rather than in those tourist-relief from sorrow in sympathy. In the psycholohaunted towns which foreigners have denational- gy of suffering the endurance of the Spartan is ized with their carpet civilization. We have often coupled with the exhibition of the martyr; coupled the names of Kemble and Lear, which combine well with other and older associations, because both have selected and sketched for themselves; peeping behind scenes seldom visited, and raising corners of the curtain which conceals to tramontanes the drama of Italian life. Here we have set before us a page or two of a book of beauty, which, thumbed indeed by thousands every year, remains sealed save to the initiated—and to none more so than the rank-and-file of fashion who, bored with Brighton, try a "winter season at Rome." In both instances art has been summoned to aid representations of nature: the lady weds her prose to immortal verse; the gentleman describes his own drawings, a process unusual in illustrated works, but highly commendable when, what is still more unusual, the author is not swamped by the artist. Reno A common yearning for consolation impelled both to seek brighter skies: one needed an anodyne for deep-rooted sorrows of the mind-the other a remedy for inveterate achings of the body; nor have their pilgrimages been in vain. vated in spirit by her Italian Year, Fanny Kemble (for we resume her European name, as, dismissing her Butler, she writes herself simple Fanny in the preface) has happily returned to that stage which her gifted family made their own, to delight myriads by again becoming public property. Mr. Lear in the balmy south baffled the insidious disease which under our stinted suns nips youth and talent, and, by turning to good account accomplishments, which, ere the fickle goddess frowned, were but amusements, has secured an honorable independence for those he loves the best, and has enrolled his name high in art-in that city where art is most appreciated. Thus much, by way of introduction, would have sufficed in ordinary cases; but giving due preceCLXXXVII, LIVING AGE. VOL. XV. 31 many there be who, even without the excuse of her professional training, can dissect with stois pride the morbid anatomy of their hearts, and reveal to every eye festering wounds, which the tenderest hand of friend is never permitted to probe or bind up; who, masking inward depression by outward hilarity, cherish by concealment the worm in the bud, and yet bare their stuffed bosoms to the world for daws to peck at. Her first morning at Rome is ushered in with a retrospect. She tells her tale-how all was set on one cast, and the hazard of the die a blankand pale as moon-beam on snow-wreath is the ray of hope which lights up this autobiography of despair. These emptyings of vials of wrath, mingled. with tears, recall the breathing, burning revelations of Lord Byron and Mrs. Norton. "Early in life, when hope seems prophecy, And strong desire can sometimes mould a fate, Across an ocean-not thy sapphire waves, ise. Upon that distant shore, a dream more fair The last grim pages of my book of life, Upon the threshold of earth's Paradise, is on, non-existing charms are decked in rainbow And waved me towards it. And at last I tints; in the reaction, when the Titania illusion is came, But with a broken heart, Oh, Italy! Vol. i., over, motes are magnified into monsters, and a demigod dethroned into a donkey. Thus the daily occurrence of petty disappointments and dissatisfactions poisoned the day and night of this creature of over-exaggerated expectations, and led our Kate, untamable by any Yankee Petruchio, to repudithat very great body with very little soul," and emancipate herself from "the mean and grinding martyrdom," the slavery and "domestic institutions" of the stripes. ate 66 Far from us be any depreciation of the goods which the New World holds out to the under-fed millions of the over-crammed old one; to them it is a land both of promise and performance, where Ceres never denies her sheaves to labor, and allbountiful Pomona need not be worshipped in temples of taxed glass. There Nature's table d'hôte is not full; still bread alone will not suffice to those who have the means of living; where the poor are filled. the rich may be sent empty away. The best of the Americans seem always too happy to escape from America. At home they are obliged to join in the universal chorus of "Who but we?"—but unless you pin them down by the paucity of private dollars, or glue them by a plaster of official ones-they are eager to stretch their wings for a flight from the vaunted paradise of equal rights. Their resource, as in the slaveholding democracy of Athens, where crows pecked at eagles, is self-exile to lands of freer, purer air, where fortune, station, luxury, and above all, the priceless luxury of privacy, may be enjoyed-the "painful proximity" of the profane avoided-and the fellowship of kindred souls cultivated, without being denounced as an aristocrat, or persecuted by Plato's "many-headed beast," ever, in the words of Aristotle, " despotic towards the affluent and good, who aspire to rise above its muddy level." Experience of the day reasoneth as well as Greek philosophy of old; and, better read in Coriolanus than the Stagyrite, our authoress exclaims from the bottom of her heart on leaving France, "How much does coming abroad, and much more the institutions of America, make us love England!" The trip to Rome succeeded better than that to Cincinnati. The transatlantic failure must cause more sorrow than surprise. Taking the fair adventurer's published opinions as exponents of her character, that underwriter was bold who insured One great grief alone binds her with iron link a perfect union speculation in the United States. to the scene of republican tyranny; there remain There be land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves her children, parted at one fell swoop from the and land-thieves: her "wonderful wilderness," mother. Time, like ivy, may cover the rent, but full as it may be of promise, was poorly calculated never can repair the ruin. "She cannot but reto administer to the wants of a patient so imagi- member such things were, and were most dear." native, exigeante, and impressionable; petted at Thus, as the casual touch of a passer-by disturbs home in public and private, impatient of unaccus-rain-drops long suspended on some cypress branch, tomed control and contradiction, born in an old full- which start forth revealed in tears, so trifles light grown country, educated among "accomplished as air cause her wounds to bleed afresh. Who facts" and persons-the deficiencies and discrep- of us has not some sad or sweet remembrance ancies of a half-fledged people, struggling for fondly kept hived like the bag of the bee, which a position in the back-woods of social existence, little something, no matter what, voiceless and could not but jangle, grate, and jar on the nerves meaningless to all the world besides, recalls instanof this delicate and daintily nourished organization. taneously in all its freshness, whether of honey or The faculty of highest enjoyment is counterbalanced wormwood? But why mangle in prose what the by a corresponding capability of misery; double- Childe (iv. 33) has embalmed in one of the most edged is poet's fancy; so long as the fine frenzy magnificently true of his stanzas?— |