respected him so far as to leave him unmolested, and at liberty to live where he would, and move about as he pleased. I was introduced to him soon after my first arrival in Paraguay. He was then about sixty-eight years of age. His mode of life was simple, frugal, and altogether unostentatious. But yet there was something of the je ne sai quoi of the old Governor about him. Every part of his own attire was scrupulously clean; everything in his humble dwelling had an air of neatness and arrangement, which showed rather diminished means than superseded habits of elegance and taste. The plate off which he dined was beautifully bright; the small table at which he ate, and which never admitted of more than one guest, was covered with a napkin snowy white; pure and cool water, in a sparkling caraffe, showed that to be his principal beverage; for the wine stood on a small side-table, to be helped only when called for. An old and favourite butler, the only servant in attendance, stood at a distance more respectful, and waited with an attention more reverential, than it was possible he could have done during General Velasco's governorship. Ali this I saw when occasionally I dined with him, preparatorily to our going to shoot partridges in the evening. He was a keen sportsman, and an excellent shot. With his Spanish barrel, all inlaid with silver, and a clumsy, but very capital lock, he took his sure and graceful aim, and seldom missed his bird. Often did we together, in the cool of the evening, go forth on horseback to our two hours' exercise and sport, in the most lovely country upon which Nature ever lavished her beauties. With our favourite dogs, and our two servants-one to hold our horses, and another to alleviate our very gentle fatigue by handing us a glass of what was there a great rarity, English porter, did General Velasco and I pass many an afternoon together, and return to his or my house, with our twelve brace of birds, to sit afterwards in the open court, and smoke a cigar under the clear moon, and the delightful and refreshing fragrance of the evening breeze. One other amusement, only, the simple and patriarchial General had. He was very fond of humming-birds, and had a dozen cages stocked with them, and hung all round his usual sitting-room. There he bred them, there he fed them; and as you walked in upon him of a forenoon, you might see him, in his morning gown, surrounded by a number of the little flutterers,-one sipping syrup from one small quill, another from another. They flew about his ears, hovered round his mouth, or pitched upon his shoulder, with all the endearment of perfect confidence and love. When tired, he shook his hands in the gentlest possible way in the midst of them, and instantly the rich and gaudy little tribe dispersed, each to its respective cage. Scarcely had it been there, however, for a moment, when it poised itself on its wings within its pretty tenement, and looked towards its kind feeder, as if alike impatient and desirous to know when it might return to him. General Velasco was supported by the cheerful and voluntary donations of his countrymen, the old Spaniards, residing in Assumption. They ministered to his every want in a way so delicate, and so honourable to themselves, that it deserves to be recorded. The butler had been a servant in the general's family in Spain, and left it, to accompany the member of it whom he most respected and loved, when he embarked for South America. This butler had the entire superintendence of all General Velasco's domestic affairs, when he was governor. When he ceased to be governor, the general insisted upon his butler's providing for himself, by getting another situation. The butler remonstrated thus-"Ah! Sir, is it possible, that after having been a favoured servant of your own and your family's during twenty years of your prosperity, you should now turn me off in the bleak day of your adversity? What have I done to merit this?" As Ruth to Naomi, so Benito (that was the butler's name) "clave" to his master. Most honourable butler; he would not go free. He said—“ Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God. Where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me." Benito did go with his master; it was to Benito's care and kindness that all the nice arrangements about his master were to be traced. Benito first spent his own little fortune to effect this, telling his master that his friends, the old Spaniards, sent him the money, without sending their names. Benito, when his own money was done, got, literally in this anonymous way, from the Spaniards, what more was required for his master's use. Benito was his master's servant-he was also his ministering angel. "They were lovely in their lives, and in their death they were not divided;" for when the cruel and relentless jealousy of the tyrant Francia at length laid its iron gripe upon poor General Velasco, tore him, at the age of seventy-six, from his home to a prison, and there suffered him to die of starvation, neglect, and filth-Benito, stretched out at his master's feet, survived him but one day. The bishop of Paraguay was a man almost equally respected and equally unfortunate with General Velasco. I was introduced at the palace to his lordship, and had the honour of kissing his hand, on which sparkled a rich diamond ring. Dr. Francia told him that it was not customary for Protestants to kneel to their prelates; and that as Paraguay was now a country that tolerated all religions, I must be excused from this ceremony. The bishop very graciously acquiesced, spoke to me a good deal, and considering I could not, as a heretic, occupy a very high place in his opinion, I had much reason not only to be satisfied with the distinguished honour of kissing his lordship's hand, but to be very thankful for not having to go down on my knees. This latter ceremony was nothing more than every individual, at one time, in Paraguay, went through as he passed the bishop in the street. He was a venerable, meck, and mild-looking man, and had belonged to the order of Franciscan friars. Francia so beset him with threats and intimidations, and not content with completely undermining his ecclesiastical power, so taunted and insulted, fretted and frightened him, that he drove him to complete mental alienation. He lingered a few years in this melancholy state, and then died in the depths and misery of poverty, wretchedness, and destitution. Not a friend was found to close his eyes; neither could there be obtained for him a separate grave. Dragged on a hurdle to the public place of burial, he was there committed, in a large hole, to his mother earth, in common with the naked wretches who had died in prison, or been executed by order of the Dictator. The celebrated botanist Monsieur Bonpland-that Bonpland who travelled with Humboldt during the course of his scientific researches in Mexico, was detained many years a prisoner in Paraguay by Francia. In one of his long, stern, unrelenting moods, the Dictator resisted every effort, supplication, and influence used to obtain the liberation of Bonpland. This enterprising naturalist, having been led up the river Paraná, on botanical research, found, in a part of the Misiones territory, some fine forests of the yerba, or Paraguay tea tree. The exportation of this commodity having, under the system of Francia's non-intercourse policy, been prohibited from Paraguay, Bonpland, with the Indians residing near the spot, formed an establishment for the purpose of collecting and preparing it. This of course excited Francia's jealousy. He equipped a small military force, sent it against the establishment of the peaceful but enterprising botanist, completely overthrew it, and carried Bonpland himself a prisoner into Paraguay. The wife and daughter of this gentleman were at the time in Buenos Ayres. His wife, after exhausting, and exhausting in vain, every effort there, to obtain her husband's liberation, proceeded at length to Europe, to try what could be done through the mediation of the French court, for the unhappy prisoner. The following letter, transmitted to me from Lima, by my brother, who saw Madame Bonpland there, on her return from Europe, gives a short account of the indefatigable zeal and energy of this amiable and accomplished woman. She is an honour to her sex: she is a most especial honour to the married part of it-she is a noble, a delightful specimen of the enterprize to which, with conjugal love as the basis of it, that sex may be stimulated. "Lima, 27th June, 1827. 'MY DEAR JOHN-Madame Bonpland arrived here a few days ago, and I have just had a long conversation with her. She is bound on the perilous enterprize of joining her husband in Paraguay; and it is impossible not to feel the highest interest in her behalf. A year ago Madame Bonpland left Rio de Janeiro with her daughter for France, and there applied to the King for a requisition of the person of Bonpland, as a French subject, from Francia. The French minister proposed addressing him as 'Dr. Francia, simply, and Madame Bonpland was three months engaged in the arduous enterprise of getting the French cabinet to style him-' His Excellency the Dictator of Paraguay.' It was at last conceded to her, on the solemn promise, that the dispatch should either be delivered by her own hands, or returned to the King: so great was his Majesty's fear that the style of the address might be construed into an acknowledgment of the Doctor's government. Madame Bonpland next got a letter from Mr. Canning, begging Bonpland's person of the Dictator; and she then returned to Rio de Janeiro. "Here she was disappointed in her hope of getting to Paraguay by the route of Matagroso. She had previously established a correspondence with General Sucre, who had offered her his assistance in getting to Paraguay, if necessary, by the interior of Peru, and so to the Brazil frontiers, on the river Paraguay, whence she could descend it, and reach Assumption. "She sailed from Rio de Janeiro for Valparaiso, and arrived there lately. She there got letters again, from the Chile government, in favour of her husband, for Francia. She now waits here for General La Mar, (the President of Peru) to get letters to the same effect from him. She will proceed hence back to Arica, and so to La Paz. At this place she expects either to hear from Francia, or to get a military escort from General Sucre, with which to proceed straight across the country to Paraguay. "The undertaking is as singular and arduous as can well be imagined; and you cannot conceive a more interesting woman for the undertaking than Madame Bonpland. She is of the age and figure and elegance of Lady P—————y. Her face is not so handsome, but full of soul and intelligence; and she is not only accomplished and fascinating in her manners, but has a really intelligent and well-cultivated mind. "She left her daughter at Paris, and has no companion for her proposed undertaking. Our old school-fellow, Captain Tait, of H.M.S. Volage, has agreed to give her a passage to Arica. "I am only afraid, alas! that the savage nature, and phlegmatic, coldblooded feelings of Francia, are totally incapable of relenting, even at the sight of female heroism in distress, like that of Madame Bonpland. "Yours, &c. WILLIAM A single glance at the map, most gracious reader (and if a man, in admiration of Madame Bonpland's devotion-if a woman, as a tribute of respect for what she could undertake,—of sympathy for what she must have suffered, you should bestow this glance,) a single glance at the map will show the nature and extent of her voyages and travels, for the one object of procuring her husband's liberation from captivity. First, she sailed from the river Plate to France; thence to England; and across the Atlantic again, from England to Rio de Janeiro; from hence you will see, that had she been permitted to follow up her original intention of crossing the country to Paraguay, she might have reached Assumption in three weeks, the distance between it and Rio de Janeiro, by the land route, being not more than eight hundred miles. This, however, she could not do, and so sailed from Rio round the cold and boisterous region of Cape Horn, to Valparaiso. At Valparaiso she embarked for Lima, and sailed back from Lima to Arica. From hence, crossing the sandy deserts of Peru, herself the only female, escorted through a savage country by rough soldiers, she made her way to the river Paraguay, above Assumption, and then embarking in a canoe, was paddled by Indians down the stream, till she came to Francia's capital. Before she could reach this place, she must have sailed and travelled from the time of her first leaving Buenos Ayres, 21,500 miles. She did then reach Paraguay-had an interview with the Dictatorprostrate at his feet, she laid her credentials before him ;--she entreated, wept, implored-" Oh, Sir, restore to me my husband!" Vain were her tears, and useless were her supplications. As well might they have been addressed to the flinty rock, or the howling wind. Francia's heart was harder than the adamant-more chilling than the blast. Not only did he refuse to liberate Bonpland, but even to permit his wife to see him. Back she measured her desolate and solitary steps to Chile; and there in widowed sadness-her husband still alive-she set herself to earn a scanty subsistence by the establishment of a school. Bonpland was liberated, and allowed to leave Paraguay, some years after the date of the preceding letter from Lima, in consequence of a remonstrance addressed by the French consul to Francia, from Buenos Ayres, which had, I believe, the effect of intimidating the Dictator.* Of the subsequent fortune or fate of Bonpland and his wife, I have had no information. It was intimated to him that there were then French ships of war in the river Plate, and that they would no longer permit the unjust violation either of the liberty or the property of French subjects. 66 OUR EXILE IN ENGLAND:" AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF SPANISH REFugees. ENGLAND has uniformly shown an honourable sympathy with that noble little band of Spaniards-the fallen defenders of a disastrous, but inextinguishable cause-who, a few years ago, sought the shelter of her shores, after every sacrifice and every exertion that heart could prompt, or hand achieve, on behalf of the constitutional liberty of their country. Of these men, some have since died in their not inglorious exile-died with the consolation which the memory of patriotic deeds and motives must ever impart-and some who have lived on, "bating no jot of heart or hope" for better times, are gone back to the land of their homes, to lend fresh aid to the revived impulses of freedom-while a few, yet lingering among us in the persevering exercise of those vocations to which necessity has constrained them, present to our admiration the fine and touching spectacle of the constant mind struggling with adversity. We need no apology for offering to our readers the following brief records of such men as we have here referred to: on the contrary, when we add that their own hands have traced the originals of those records that their own pens have furnished the memorials of their hopeful toils and their still hopeful sufferings-we feel that we arouse and interest at once those associations that have so often before caused English bosoms to thrill in their behalf. For the opportunity of laying before the public these "short and simple annals of the brave," we are indebted to Mr. Upcott, of whose indefatigable exertions in the collection of autographs they present a curious specimen, and one which of itself goes far towards overturning the objections so often raised against the alleged futility of such a pursuit. They are written in an albumnearly all in the native language of the contributors, from which noble tongue we have transferred them to our own-and all in direct continuity with each other, in agreement with that fraternal community of spirit under which their authors had acted. Those which we now offer are not the whole that appear in Mr. Upcott's book: we may perhaps find future room to complete the series. We would commence with General Mina, that scarred and veteran pattern of intrepid constancy, that " telo animus præstantior omni," who is at this moment actively upholding the cause of political regeneration, in support of which he has earned so many previous laurels; but the short memorandum from his pen happens to be one of mere compliment, and is written in English of a somewhat imperfect construction, which we would neither alter, nor yet incur the risk of exciting any inopportune levity of feeling by exactly transcribing it. Let him therefore pass, with three cheers (of the heart) for so gallant a soldier. Next come we to the honoured name of General Quiroga. account of himself is faced by a lithographic portrait, exhibiting lineaments as frank and martial as Desdemona's self could desire. His words, translated, are as follow: His "Anthony Quiroga, born at Betanzos in Galicia, commenced his martial career in the Marine Guard in 1804; entered the army in 1808, at the age of 16: was wounded and made prisoner in Asturias, in 1809; owed his release to the officer in command of the escort, who then accompanied him from Venavenre to the quarters of the Spanish army; was appointed staff-officer and Colonel in 1812; took part in the actions at Valmaread, |