72

MISERY OF IT ON A SMALL SCALE.

delights is that of sinking into whatever obscurity you please,) and see what a night-mare oppression will be lifted from his troubled breast. The first calculation which of a morning you make in a petty town, is what you must do to go decorously, and without being scandalized, through the work of the day; the last thing you ever think of is this, in a large one. Give us London or Paris, in the old world, and Buenos Ayres, Lima, or Mexico in the new, in which to refrigerate our over-heated spirits, after the hot vapour-bath, especially in troublous times, of inland society.

Your's &c.

THE AUTHORS.

LETTER XXVIII.

THE AUTHORS TO GENERAL MILLER.

Historical and Political Events, rapidly given, according to our original Plan-Buenos Ayres, the Matrix of the South American Revolution-Important Results of the Independence of South America-Field Marshal Beresford's and Col. Pack's Escape-El Señor Doctor Don Mariano de Moreno-The Viceroy Cisneros -The Revolution. Deposition of the Viceroy Sobremonte Alzaga and Elio-The Accession of Cisneros-Doña Carlota de Bourbon.

London, 1842.

WE have lingered so long over South American scenes and personal adventure, that our readers, by this time, will have begun to suppose they are to look for nothing of either a political or historical nature in our present volumes. They will fancy that, bound by the spell of early reminiscence, (that is now the fashionable word,) and by the charm which surrounds the record of desultory wanderings, we are confined within the magic circle of "personal narrative," and can by no means move in a wider sphere.

But although there is, undoubtedly, a fascination in the record of early travel and adventure, and although the writer may indulge the hope

VOL. II.

E

that his reader may be of an equally indolent turn of mind with himself, and content, therefore, with the scope of events which mere personal observation may embrace; yet our work would fall short of what its title indicates, were we not to go into a wider field than that which the simple incident of travel opens up.

We propose, therefore, to keep to our original plan of sketching, as we go along, the historical and political events of those sections of South America which we have visited, and with the habits, customs, and people of which we have brought our readers acquainted. And we are the more particularly inclined to do this in regard to the United Provinces of the River Plate, that there is no account of any kind in print, professing to be either a history or a political survey of the provinces, since they were erected into an independent state. Of the progress of Peru, Chile, and Paraguay, here and there a stray writer has collected some particulars, and put them together in a slight historical form. But of Buenos Ayres, the matrix of the Spanish American revolutions, we have been able to find no account of any kind.*

* Don Manuel Moreno's volume, hereafter to be mentioned, only

We shall endeavour to be brief throughout, and where no events of public importance, or stirring interest mark the progress of the republic, we shall be especially laconic. But while we pourtray the national features of the people, and delineate them in the ordinary dress which in private and domestic intercourse they wear; and while we sketch the broader outlines of the country which is theirs, both in its natural and artificial aspect; our picture would be incomplete, were we to omit the bolder figures which history brings upon the canvass. The political and historical events, therefore, of the River Plate republic form an essential part of the work which we have in hand.

Yet we know by experience how difficult it is to impart anything like a stirring interest to historical detail; and in the present case we do not hide from ourselves that we lie under the additional disadvantage of having the materials, out of which we are to form our historical account, underrated or misunderstood by the generality of English readers. So little of South

brings his sketch of Buenos Ayres affairs down to December, 1810, six months after the commencement of the Revolution. The work is written in Spanish.

76 IMPORTANT RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION.

American politics, and history, of either an authentic or interesting kind, has seen the light, that the European world has sat down with an erroneous conviction that the history of the various states of the New World is devoid of those great events which arrest the attention of mankind, and which stand out as the mighty beacons on high places, by which the statesmen of the world are to steer their course. Such readers, we have to apprehend, will sit down to our details with the foregone conclusion, that they are too petty in their nature, either to instruct or to amuse.

But it is undeniable that events are important in proportion as they are fraught or not with results, and their interest may be as great, in a new and unformed state of society, as in an old and settled government. To the eye of philosophy, indeed, the progress of the former offers more important matter for observation than the latter; for she, uncaptivated by high sounding names, and undazzled by the glare of national grandeur, watches, with a steady look, the progress of the human race, and finds it a more curious and more interesting problem at an early stage, than when, at a later one, its intricacies are more fully developed and better understood.