THE

GUERILLA BROTHERS.

A FEW years ago, as at the present moment, a French army was in the heart of Spain. Another cycle of destiny had gone round, and the giant tread of Napoleon echoed along the track in which the Roman, the Goth, and the Moor had successively preceded him. But although Spain was conquered, the Spaniards were still unsubdued. The spirit of chivalry which at one time shed a romantic lustre over the name of this unhappy people, seemed to rekindle for a moment in the day of their degradation; and the annals of those desperate struggles which ensued, afford examples of high enthusiasm and heroic valour, which seem to belong rather to the history of former times than to the dark and. blotted page of the present. Not only in those

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districts where confidence was inspired by numbers, or by the countenance of distinguished leaders, or where nearer contiguity to the scene of action exposed the inhabitants, more directly, to all the horrors of conquest, converting courage into desperation, and mingling the loftier impulses of patriotism with feelings of private exasperation and revenge; but in her remotest provinces Spain felt the electric shock, and the same spirit of indignant resistance, as if at one instant, ran through the whole kingdom. Every village had its band of faithful defenders, every. valley poured forth its hardy peasantry, and every pass, among the hills was guarded by men born within their shadow. Many of the nobles and proprietors summoned their dependants to the field; and headed them in person; or what was more frequently the case, individuals of lower rank, by personal prowess and good fortune, acquired the confidence of their comrades, and drew around them the brave and adventurous of all classes, who were thus formed into the independent bands, known by the name of Guerillas.

Prompt, active, and indefatigable, acquainted from infancy with every inch of the ground, stimulated by public honour, and goaded into phrensy by private wrongs, it is no wonder that those bands should have proved the powerful instruments they did in the deliverance of their

country, and indeed it may be a question whether England, unassisted by such co-operation, might not have poured in vain for a century to come her devoted thousands into this Golgotha of the brave. It will be remembered by those who attended to the details of the peninsular war, that a party of these irregular troops, under Don Alonzo de Merida, exhibited a signal instance of the use to which a force of this kind may be applied, by interrupting, during a very important period, the advance of a body of the French army while defiling through a narrow pass in the Sierra Morena. The exploit was performed with only a trifling loss on the part of the Guerillas, but one of their number fell on the occasion, whose fate was attended by circumstances of too peculiar and interesting a nature to be easily forgotten. He was one of two brothers who had volunteered into the band at the time it was first formed, and whose singular deportment had strongly excited the curiosity of their comrades, even in that stirring and eventful time. That they were brothers could not be doubted; their consanguinity was stamped in every line of their countenances, and their ages appeared to be so nearly alike that it was believed they were twins. Brothers then, twin-brothers, following the same fortunes, sharing the same dangers, and reaping the same glory, it may be supposed that a frater

nity of soul also must have been induced, and that unknown and unfriended as they were, the children of the same cradle would have clung to each other with even a warmer and more confiding regard than the friendship of high-minded and generous youth. In place, however, of this being the case, a strange mysterious reserve seemed to govern their mutual intercourse. One might have taken them to be strangers, for they seldom exchanged words, and never the courtesies of acquaintanceship; but the deep and earnest looks they bent on each other, even in the midst of battle, of flight, or of pursuit, seemed to speak volumes of intelligence. superficial observer, too, might have sometimes believed them to be enemies ; but there was nothing of the bitterness or the hypocrisy of hatred, either in their silence or their looks; and on one or two occasions, a burst of natural feeling was seen to break through the cold and gloomy exterior they had assumed.

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Even among the desperate adventurers of whom Merida's band was composed, the brothers were noted for a daring courage,-if courage it may be termed which sets every calculation of danger at defiance; but no community of feeling could be traced between them and the associates of their perils; they seemed to be altogether uninfluenced by the motives which in such circum

stances actuate other men-no cry of liberty was ever heard from their lips,-no smile of glutted vengeance ever shed its horrid light over their still features. Among their other peculiarities was observed an utter indifference to beauty; and this could not escape being a very remarkable trait in the character of young and handsome cavaliers, at a period when scenes of the most romantic adventure were every-day occurrences, when the silence of night was broken by the shrieks of women,-and when the wandering Guerilla so often felt the blood which flowed in their defence mixed with their tears.

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These singularities of disposition were ascribed by their comrades to different causes. some, particularly of the younger class, believed that an unfortunate passion, antecedent to their joining the corps, had thrown a gloom over their existence, others, with more seeming probability, attributed the effect to the conflict of religious zeal with patriotic enthusiasm, which, during that period, was observed to influence the conduct of some members of the ecclesiastical body. These set the brothers down as monks who had still retained in their cloisters some of the lofty feelings which once distinguished the high-born Spaniard; and who, when liberated by the hand of war, perhaps driven from their seclusion by sacrilegious violence, though distracted by reli