But Spain was not left to itself. The French court became exceedingly jealous at this time of the Regent's intentions respecting the marriage of the young queen. They sent an envoy, who was called a family ambassador, and who as such pretended to immediate and uncontrolled access to the young queen. The Regent resisted, the envoy left, France was more irritated, and then determined on the Regent's downfall. Thirty journals were almost simultaneously established in Madrid and different parts of the peninsula, all of which set up the same cry of the Regent's being sold to England, and of Spain being about to be sacrificed in a treaty of commerce. Barcelona, most likely to be affected by this bugbear treaty, was of course the centre of opposition; and there, under the instigation and with the pay of French agents, open resistance was organ ized, and insurrection broke forth. The subsequent events are known: the bombardment, the reduction, the lenity of the Regent, the impunity of the Barcelonese, and their perseverance even after defeat in braving authority.

The army was then tampered with: at least some regiments. The Spanish officer, though brave, is unfortunately a gambler and an idler, with little prospect of making way in his profession by talent or by promotion in war; all chances of the latter are at present cut off; promotion is now to be had only by revolutions, since, if these are successful, the military abettors rise a step. Then there are court ways of rising in the army: a handsome fellow attracting the attention of the queen or of a lady in whom king or minister is interested: and all these chances were precluded by the dull, moral regency of Espartero, to whose self and family and ministers such ways and intrigues were utterly unknown. The young officers longed for the reign of the queens, young or old, and "down with Espartero" was first their wish, and then their cry.

Indeed from the first the Spanish officers were disinclined to Espartero as general, and much preferred Cordova, a diplomatist and a courtier; but the soldiers on the other hand preferred the Regent. With this class, then, especially with the non-commissioned officers, the efforts of the conspirators were chiefly made. Calumnies were circulated, promises lavished, the soldiers attached to the service were promised grades, the rest were promised dismissal to their homes: in fine, the army was debauched, and when the Regent wanted

to make use of it as a weapon of defence, it broke in his hands and pierced him.

The condemnation on which Espartero's enemies, the French, lay most stress, is his want of skill in maintaining himself in power. Success with them covers every virtue. The want of it exaggerates every defect. There was a discussion at Prince Talleyrand's one evening, as to who was the greatest French statesman in modern times. Each named his political hero. Talleyrand decided that Villèle was the greatest man, on the ground that in a constitutional country he kept the longest hold of power: adding, that the best ropedancer was he who kept longest on the cord. The great proof of political genius, according to Talleyrand, was to stick longest in place. The rule is a wretched one, and yet Espartero would not lose by being even in that way judged: for no Spaniard has kept such prolonged command and influence, none have attained more brilliant ends. The Treaty of Bergara, and the Regency, are two successes that might well content a life. And after all, Espartero was long enough regent to allow Spain to enjoy tranquillity under his rule, and to afford every one a taste and a prospect of what Spain might yet become, under a free, a peaceable, and a regular government.

A greater and more rare example offered to Spain by the Regent's government, was the honesty of its political and financial measures. There was no court nor court treasurer to absorb one-third or one-half of every loan and every anticipation, nor could the leasers or farmers of the public revenue obtain easy bargains by means of a bribe. Such things were disposed of by public competition; and Calatrava in this respect left behind him an example, which will render a recurrence to the old habit of proceeding too scandalous and intolerable. •

So, morality and simplicity of life, though a cause of dislike with courtiers, with place and money-hunters, was, on the contrary, a rare and highly-appreciated merit in the eyes of the citizens. No one cause occasioned more disgust and revolts in Madrid than the scandals of the court of Madrid. Its removal was a great bond of peace, whatever people may say of the salutary influence of royalty!

The party attached to the regency of the Duke of Victory as the best symbol and guard of the constitution, lay chiefly in the wellinformed and industrious class of citizens, such as exists in great majority in Madrid, Saragossa, Cadiz. In Catalonia the manufacturers and their workmen were against

him, from a belief that he wished to admit English cotton. Seville is an old archiepiscopal seat, where the clergy have great influence; and the clergy there, as well as rivalry of Cadiz, occasioned its resistance. There is, one may say, no rustic population in the south. All the poor congregate in towns, or belong to them, and form a mass of ignorant, excitable, changeable opinion, that is not to be depended upon for twentyfour hours. There is throughout a strong vein of republicanism, and a contempt for all things and persons north of the Sierra Morena: so that nothing is more easy than to get up an alborato against the government of the time being. The north of Spain, on the contrary, depends upon its rural population; and is slower to move, but much more formidable and steady when once made to embrace or declare an opinion. Throughout the north, neither citizens nor servants declared against

the Regent. It was merely the garrisons and troops of the line. Such being the force and support of the different parties, one is surprised to find that Espartero so easily succumbed, and we cannot but expect that his recall, either as Regent or general, is sooner or later inevitable.

The career of the Duke of Victory being thus far from closed, it would be premature to carve out his full-length statue to be too minute in personal anecdote, too severe or too laudatory in judging him. Our materials too are but meagre; though the "Galerie des Cotemporains" which heads our article is a popular and meritorious little work. Our present task is, however, sufficiently discharged. Señor Flores promises at Madrid a life of Espartero in three volumes; and the Duke of Victoria and Spain are subjects that we shall have ample occasion and necessity to recur to.

THE Americans of the United States, in | almost all their literary varieties, are pretty close followers of English prototypes. Bryant is a smaller Wordsworth; Longfellow, a minor Tennyson; Washington Irving, a modern Addison; Cooper was the Walter Scott of the ocean and the prairie. Prescott and Bancroft are the Robertson and Hume of the New World. Perhaps the country is too young, too prosperous, too dollar-hunting, to have time to throw out a vigorous national literature, racy of the soil. Emerson is, perhaps, the most original thinker and writer in the States; and he, too, has been called the American Carlyle. At all events, he has fed mainly on foreign philosophers, chiefly on Plato and Montaigne. He might have been a European, a Greek, or a Roman, there is so little that is American in his thought or his diction.

But the Humor and the Fun of the United States are really native and original. We cannot call this fun Wit, for it has no polish or refinement in it Indeed, it is generally coarse-what we would call low humor. It is downright screaming; in fact, the fun of a young country. It has none of the finish,

epigrammatic expression in form, and smart play upon the ideas in substance, which characterize French wit; nor any of that subtle, allusive, punning, ironical humor, in which Swift, Walpole, Goldsmith, Sidney Smith, Fonblanque, and other English and Irish wits so strikingly excelled. American humor delights in boundless exaggeration; and is ludicrous because of its gross incongruity. Yet this is wit, after a sort. Perhaps the essence of the ludicrous consists in surprise, in unexpected explosions of thought, often by bringing dissimilar things together with a shock, as when a Yankee editor of a cheap journal proclaimed, that "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, the price of the Star is only one cent!" or, as where another Yankee was found of so uncompromising a republican spirit, that he would not even wear a crown to his hat!

The United States Americans-at least those of them whom we have met with-are by no means a laughing people. Their looks are severe and stern. They do not seem to enjoy life much. They cannot take a joke, but "rile up" if a depreciating remark is made to them, especially about their country, which,

Peter Brush, a go-the-whole-hog politician. Thus Peter loquitur:

"A long time ago, my ma used to put on her specs, and say, 'Peter, my son, put not your trust in princes;' and from that day to this, I haven't done any thing of the kind, because none on them wanted to borry nothing of me; and I never see a prince or a king, but one or two, and they had been rotated out of office to borry nothing of them. Princes, pooh! Put not your trust in politicianers-there's my sentiments. You might just as well try to hold an eel by the tail, I don't care which side they're on, for I've tried both, and I know. Put not your trust in politicianers, or you'll get a hyst.

"Ten years ago it came into my head that things weren't going on right, so I pretty nearly gave myself up tetotally to the good of the Republic, and left the shop to look out for itself. I was brimful of patriotism, and so uneasy in my mind for the salivation of freedom, I couldn't work. I tried to guess which side was going to ruin, and I stuck to it like wax; sometimes I was a-one side, sometimes a-tother, and sometimes I straddled till the election was over, and came up just in time to jine the hurrah. It was good I was after, and what good could I do if I wasn't on the elected side? But, after all, it was never a bit of use. Whenever the battle was over, no matter what side was sharing the loaves and fishes, and I stepped up, I'll be hanged if they didn't cram all they could into their own mouths, put their arms over some, and grab at all the rest with their paws, and say, 'Go away, you white man, you ain't capable!'

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Both sides served me jist alike.

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Here I've been serving my country, more or less, these ten years, like a patriot, going to town meetings, hurraing my daylights out, and getting as blue as blazes; blocking the windows, getting licked fifty times, and having more black eyes and bloody noses than you could shake a stick at, and all for the common good, and for the purity of our illegal rights-and all for what? why, for nix. If any good has come out of it, the country has put it into her own pocket, and swindled me out of my arnings. I can't git no office. Republics is ungrateful! It wasn't reward I was after: I scorns the base insinuation. I only wanted to be took care of, and have nothing to do but take care of the Republic; and I've only got half-nothing to do. Being took care of was the main thing. Republics is ungrateful: I'm swaggered if they ain't. This is the way old sogers is served."

But to find the genuine "screaming" "horse" humor, we must go into the far west, into the backwoods, the mudflats, and prairies, of the remote and newly-settled districts. Go where the bear and buffalo abound, and then you are sure to fall upon the trail of the genuine humorist. Get "Hoss Allen of Messouri," or "Colonel Crockett, of Kentuck," or the "Big Bear, of Arkansas," to tell you a story, and then be sure you will have the real American flavor. Mr. T. B. Thorpe is one of the best of these story-tellers, and his " Big Bear of Arkansas" is amazingly rich and ludicrous, though too coarse for quotation in these columns. His description of “fat bar” approaches almost to the sublime. But every thing is fat in the Arkansas State; for it is "the creation State, the pushing-up country, a State where the sile runs down to the centre of the arth, and government gives you a title to every inch of it! Then its airs-just breathe them, and they will make you snort like a horse. It's a State without a faultit is.'

Colonel Crockett, a real character, was a prime specimen of this sort of humorist, and. his descriptions of his courtship, of his election canvasses, of his bear and coon hunts, are of the most ludicrous kind. He professed to grin a coon to death; and once by mistake grinned the bark off a tree. But he grinned himself into Congress for Tennessee, and made the most ludicrous speeches. His descriptions of certain specimens of the sex are outrageously absurd. One woman he describes as "ugly as a stone fence, and so ugly that it almost gave me a pain in the eyes to look at her. She looked at me as savage as a meat-axe. I instantly felt like going. I screamed out like a young painter, [panther,] though I was so mad that I was burning inside like a tar-kiln, and I wonder that the smoke hadn't been pouring out of me at all points." And here is another of his portraits of a gentle western maiden, a regular "screamer," whom he went acoorting:"

"She told me that her Sunday bonnet was a hornet's nest, garnished with wolves' tails and eagles' feathers, and that she wore a bran new gown made of a whole bear's hide, the tail serving for a train. She said she could drink of the branch without a cup; could shoot a wild-goose flying; and wade the Mississippi without wetting herself. She said she could not play on the pianne, nor sing like a nightingale, but she could outscream a catamount, and jump over her own shadow; she had good strong horse sense, and

knew a woodchuck from a skunk. So I was pleased with her, and offered her all my plunder if she would let me split the difference and call her Mrs. Crockett.

She kinder said she must insult her father before she went so far as to marry. So she took me into another room to introduce me to another beau that she had. He was setting on the edge of a grindstone at the back part of a room, with his heels on the mantelpiece! He had the skull of a catamount for a snuff-box, and he was dressed like as he had been used to seeing hard times. I got a squint into one of his pockets, and saw it was full of eyes that had been gouged from people of my acquaintance. I knew my jig was up, for such a feller could outcoort me, and I thort the gal brot me in on porpus to have a fight. So I turned off, and threatened to call again; and I cut through the bushes like a pint of whisky among forty men."

Mr. MacClintock has also written some capital sketches of Yankee Life, in strong cari cature: Johnny Beedle's Courtship is the best, but it is very rough. We are, however, disposed to regard Mr. Lowell, the poet, as one of the most genial and moderate of the Humorists of America.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, the American, is better known among us as a serious poet than as a humorist; and yet he is decidedly greater in the latter capacity than in the former. We cannot help feeling, while we read his poems, that they are bat echoesat one time of Spenser, of another of Wordsworth, at another of Keats, and lastly, of Tennyson. He is not better than any of these; he is not equal to any of them. More recently he has taken to reform subjects, and worked them up in poems; but politics and poetry cannot always, cannot often, be made to harmonize. Solid prose better suits such severe subjects as democracy, annexation, slave emancipation, temperance, and tariff-reform. If a man has got any thing to say on these subjects, it is not necessary that he should sing it in rhythmic measure. It is better that he should say his say in fitting words, in the form of prose, which is capable of greater force, or at least precision, than can be reached in the ham pered form of rhyme. In poems on such subjects there is too often foaming without fits, show of strength without real force, and much violent wrenching of words without any genuine result.

But in his humor Mr. Lowell is altogether successful. There he is at ease, homely and natural. It is never gross, as so much American humor is, but delicate and pene

trating, though sometimes broad, almost farcical, yet in either case irresistible. It does not depend for its success upon mere slang and misspelling, which is all that there is to recommend the works of some other adventurers in this department. His humor is subtle, discriminating, shrewd, genial, yet thoroughly Yankee.

Mr. Lowell first appeared as a humorist in the Biglow Papers. These purport to be a collection made by the Rev. Homer Wilbur, A. M., pastor of the first church in Jalaam, of the papers, poetical and otherwise, of his young parishioner, Hosea Biglow. Hosea has great ambition to get into print, and submits his "littery efforts" to his pastor, who was not backward to recognize in them a certain wild, puckery, acidulous, (or, as the Yankees say,) shut-eye flavor, not wholly unpleasing, nor unwholesome, to palates cloyed with the sugariness of tamed and cultivated fruit. Mr. Wilbur first duly counselled his promising young parishioner to study Pope and Goldsmith, and he accordingly tried one or two pieces in their style; but the youth objected that Mr. Pope's versification was like the regular ticking of one of Willard's clocks, in which one could fancy, after long listening, a certain kind of rhythm or tune, but which yet was only a poverty-stricken tick, tick, after all; and that he had never seen a sweetwater on a trellis growing so fairly, or in forms so pleasing to his eye, as a fox-grape over a scrub-oak in a swamp; adding, that the sweet-water could only be disfigured by having its leaves starched and ironed out, and that "Pegasus" hardly looked right with his mane and tail in curl-papers. So the Rev. Mr. Wilbur left young Hosea Biglow to follow the bent of his natural genius; and American writers generally would do well to follow the same, without thinking so much of either Pope, or Wordsworth, or Tennyson.

was

Mr. Wilbur, in his preface to the Biglow Papers, gives a very graphic account of the founding of New England, which we cannot pass over: "New England," says he, not so much a colony of a mother-country, as a Hagar driven forth into the wilderness. The little self-exiled band which came hither in 1620 came not to seek gold, but to found a democracy. They came that they might have the privilege to work and pray, to sit on hard benches and listen to painful preachers as long as they would, yea, even unto thirtyseventhly, if the Spirit so willed it. As Want was the prime foe these hardy exodists had to fortress themselves against, so it is little wonder if that traditional feud is long in wearing out of the stock. The

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