creed that a monument should be erected upon the field of battle whenever the finances of the country should allow such an expense to be incurred. They conferred the title of Duke of Vitoria upon Lord Wellington, and offered him his choice of three estates.

The extraordinary Cortes which had framed the constitution, had appointed the autumn of 1813 for the assembling of the ordinary Cortes, and their own preliminary dissolution. They had, likewise, followed the example of the French National Assembly in passing a disinterested law, that had proved fatal to the welfare of France, but was not allowed time to produce either mischievous or beneficial effects in Spain-that is to say, they decreed their own ineligibility to the next Cortes.

During this year the cause of American independence had made considerable progress. In Buenos Ayres, the insurgents, who had always had the advantage, so decidedly prevailed, that they were enabled to conclude a truce with the viceroy, in which their pretensions were partially, at least, admitted; and they merited their emancipation, by bestowing upon others some share in the liberty they claimed for themselves. They passed a law, that the children of slaves, born after a certain date, should be free. In Venezuela the struggle was renewed with increased energy: Bolivar, since known as the Liberator, came forward as a leader, and recovered most of what the Spaniards had gained the year before. Chili declared her independence, and opened her ports to all nations; and in Peru the Spaniards were losing ground. Mexico, however, they had pretty nearly recovered; Cuba remained faithful, and in Porto Rico the regency tried the experiment of conciliation. They sent thither a new intendant-general, with orders to abolish every monopoly and restriction, even such as are usually imposed upon colonies by mothercountries more liberal than Spain. The trade of the island was thrown open to all friendly and neutral nations, the export of even the precious metals being allowed, subject only to a duty.

The new or ordinary Cortes assembled on September 25, and removed themselves and the Regency to Madrid, a removal that had been some time in contemplation, but delayed on account of the violent opposition of the inhabitants of Cadiz. It was to this ordinary Cortes, after their domicilia

tion at Madrid, that the Regency referred the treaty of Valençay, and a letter from Ferdinand upon the subject. The treaty was invalid, according to a decree of the extraordinary Cortes, passed as far back as January 1, 1811, by which every act of the king during his captivity was declared to be invalid; and Spain was, moreover, bound by her treaty with England, not to conclude a separate peace with France.

On the 8th of January, 1814, the Regency, through its president, the Cardinal de Bourbon, addressed a respectful answer to the king, in which they assured him of their joy at the prospect of his majesty's approaching liberation, but confessed their wish that so happy an event should be brought about rather by the arms of his loyal subjects and faithful allies than by negotiation. The Cortes now proceeded to deliberate upon the measures to be adopted for obtaining the king's irrevocable confirmation of the new constitution upon his liberation. After much discussion it was decreed that he should not be deemed at liberty, or, consequently, entitled to assume the government, or claim obedience, until he should have solemnly taken the oath prescribed by the constitution; and that neither foreign troops nor Spanish partisans of Joseph should be suffered to accompany him into Spain.

Towards the middle of February, 1814, the weather improved, and Lord Wellington drew his troops from their cantonments. By a series of able manoeuvres, and of engagements ending with the well-contested and brilliant victory of Orthez, gained on February 27, he drove Soult successively, from post to post, through a country of peculiar difficulty, and abounding in strong defensive positions, of which the French marshal skilfully endeavored to avail himself, but was uniformly foiled by the superior skill of his British competitor. After his defeat at Orthez, Soult retreated up the Adour to Tarbes, hoping by this movement to deliver France from the invaders, by drawing Lord Wellington back towards the Pyrenees, and to effect his own junction either with Suchet himself, or with some portion of his troops.

Whilst Ferdinand's allies and subjects were thus progressively triumphing over his oppressor, the captive prince had regained his liberty. Napoleon, finding that no treaty concluded with the king of

Spain, whilst his prisoner, would be acknowledged by the nation as valid, on March 14 released him unconditionally, as the only remaining chance of detaching Spain from England, and recovering his former influence over that country. Of course the liberated monarch's journey through France was so regulated as to prevent any intercourse between him and the deliverer of his kingdom, Wellington, or the Spanish generals fighting under him in the same cause. Ferdinand was conducted to Perpignan, and there, on March 19, delivered over to the care of Suchet, who was to make arrangements, under the royal guarantee, for the safe return of the different French garrisons, spread over the eastern coast of Spain, to his army, upon their surrendering to the king the fortresses they still held.

Ferdinand, either ignorant of the real interest of the country, or regardless of all but his own emancipation from the control of the French, and perhaps also from the authority of the Cortes, readily signed whatever agreement Suchet desired. He was then escorted by the French marshal to Figueras, where he took leave of his jailers, and crossing the river Fluvia on the 24th, was received by Copons and throngs of his native subjects, who had flocked from every place within reach, to greet the return of their beloved sovereign. Ferdinand's signature having, however, by the then law of the land, no authority until he should have taken the oath prescribed by the constitution, Suchet's object was unattained. The surrender of the fortresses, and the safe passage of the garrisons, still remained to be negotiated betwixt him and Copons; and before they had brought it to a conclusion, the progress of events in France rendered all arrangements of the kind unnecessary.

Lord Wellington had not allowed Soult time to receive the accession of strength he expected from the result of Suchet's negotiations. He followed him to Toulouse, forced the passage of the Garonne, and on April 10, under the walls of the city, gained the last victory of this war, in the battle of Toulouse. Soult retired into the town, which, upon Wellington's preparing to invest it, he evacuated on the night of the 12th, the allied army permitting him to withdraw unmolested. The next day they took possession of the city, where they were received with every demonstration of joy, and the inhabitants proclaimed Louis XVIII. It was the last occasion

upon which the act could have the grace of a spon taneous impulse of the people.

The Bourbons were now restored to their long lost throne, and peace was re-established throughout Europe; most of its sovereigns recovering the dominions of which they had been despoiled, with such alterations, however, as, in some instances, were required by the ambition of the conquerors, in others, were judged indispensable to the preservation of the balance of power. The principal of the changes were, that Austria regained the Venetian territories in exchange for the Netherlands, which were once more united with Holland, in order jointly to constitute a state of some little territorial extent; that Russia acquired all the portion of Poland which, formerly allotted to Prussia, had latterly constituted Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw, and that some small provinces upon the Rhine were given to Prussia in exchange, as well as part of Saxony; the king of Saxony forfeiting so much of his dominions, in punishment for his attachment to Bonaparte; that Genoa was given to the king of Sardinia; and that Sweden acquired Norway instead of Finland, of which Russia had robbed her, Norway being the property of the king of Denmark, who, like the king of Saxony, had persevered in his alliance with Napoleon.

Lord Wellington, like the rest of the allies, now of course evacuated the French territory, and dissolved his mixed army, the British, Spanish, and Portuguese troops severally returning home. In Portugal no change was produced by Napoleon's fall. That kingdom had long been freed from invaders; the authority of the lawful queen, or rather of her son the prince-regent, acknowledged, and the government administered as before the invasion. The island of Madeira, temporarily occupied by England, had as long been restored. No alteration, for better or for worse, had been made in the constitution of the country, which remained the absolute monarchy it had gradually become since the assembling of the Cortes had been discontinued. After their subjection to Spain, independence had become the only national object of the Portuguese. The intimate alliance with England continued; and the only perceptible change was, that the royal family showing no inclination to quit their extensive, wealthy, and beautiful Brazilian empire, it was now the mother-country instead of the colony that

was governed by delegated powers; a circumstance, however, always rendering despotic sovereignty more oppressive and offensive.

In Spain the case was very different. There the captivity of the royal family having overthrown the existing forms of government, the long discontinued Cortes had taken the opportunity of establishing a new and far more liberal constitution; but which, being fashioned upon French, not English, principles, had disgusted the two most powerful bodies in the state, the nobility and the clergy. During the greater part of the time that had elapsed since the promulgation of this constitution, almost the whole country had been occupied by the enemy; so that the great mass of the people, who were not enlightened enough to feel the want, or appreciate the blessings, of political liberty, had not sufficient experience of the benefits which the new institutions were calculated to confer, to have conceived any value for them; and the troops, who, from their intercourse with the English army, might have learned some respect for liberty and equal laws, were hostile to the Cortes on account of the neglect and injustice with which they had frequently been treated.

Such was the state in which Ferdinand found his kingdom. He himself had, at Valençay, known nothing of any of the transactions occurring in Spain beyond what the French newspapers were permitted to publish; and a copy of the constitution was first brought him by Palafox, on his return from his mission to Madrid. A narrow-minded and ill-educated prince naturally resented the limitations imposed by the Cortes upon the absolute power which his predecessors of the Bourbon and Austrian lines had so long possessed; and, though he does not seem to have taken any positive resolution, he avoided early committing himself, as the Cortes had designed that he should, by quitting the road they had prescribed for his journey through Spain, and by which the cardinal de Bourbon, with a deputation of the Cortes, was proceeding to meet him, for the purpose of receiving his constitutional oath. He went by the way of Saragossa to Valencia. Wherever he passed, the populace, excited by the priests, tore down the tablets upon which the word Constitution was engraved, shouting "Down with the Cortes!" and "Long live the absolute King!" whilst the grandees hastened to pay their court to

him, and to express their detestation of a constitution that deprived them of their objectional feudal privileges, without giving them instead a natural and legitimate influence in the state.

His own inclination thus encouraged by high and low, Ferdinand received his kinsman, the cardinal de Bourbon, who followed him to Valencia, with marked coldness, and immediately deprived him of his archbishopric of Toledo, which he bestowed upon one of the fiercest of the anti-constitutional clergy. He refused to take the prescribed oath; and, although, by referring the treaty of Valençay to them, he had virtually acknowledged and sanctioned the authority of both the Cortes and the Regency, he now resolved to disavow them. On May 4, he published a decree, declaring that the Cortes had been illegally convoked, or, rather, illegally constituted, from the exclusion of the nobility and clergy, and that all their acts were consequently null and void. He forthwith dissolved the Cortes, and abrogated their constitution; but he promised the redress of all grievances, and the convocation of a lawful Cortes, in which any reforms that might appear necessary should be made.

On the 13th, Ferdinand proceeded to Madrid, where he was received, it should seem, with the more enthusiasm for his late measures. He proceeded to acts for which no such palliation can be found, namely, inflicting punishments upon those who had defended his cause when he himself had abandoned it, but had, in his opinion, forfeited all claim to his gratitude, by seeking to limit the power they preserved for him. The inquisition was reestablished, though not with the power of capital punishment, and every old abuse was restored. The only symptom of gratitude shown by Ferdinand to those who had so zealously served him, was his confirming to Lord Wellington the honors and rewards conferred upon him by the Cortes.

In America the long-pending dispute with the United States respecting the boundaries of Louisiana and West Florida was finally settled by the sale of both the Floridas to that power. The war with the colonies continued, but altered in character. Ferdinand there took part with the Cortes he had condemned, pertinaciously refused to acknowledge the equality, the sort of federal connection witn the mother country that the colonies claimed, and lavished the resources of Spain by

sending his best troops across the Atlantic to assert the old Spanish monopoly. The colonies, exasperated by this return for their loyalty, and accustomed to the license inseparable from civil war, now disowned the authority of Ferdinand, and proclaimed their entire and absolute independence. Ferdinand resisted these pretensions yet more vehemently than

the former, but it was evident from the beginning that his efforts to recover the sovereignty of the American provinces were altogether futile, and that Spain had finally lost her Trans-atlantic empire. Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines were her only remaining colonies.

F all the states of Central and Southern America (we quote freely from Ward and Locke), Mexico has experienced the greatest vicissitudes and convulsions. Since its separation from Spain it has nine times changed its form of government; fifty persons succeeded each other in the government within fortythree years, and the number of small and large party risings and military émeutes exceeds three hundred.

Mexico may be said to have vegetated for nearly three centuries in a state of semi-quiescent prosperity, interrupted by few disturbances of any kind until the year 1810, when the discontent, which had been gaining ground against the vice-regal power during the war of the mother-country with Napoleon, broke into open rebellion under the leadership of a country priest named Hidalgo. The defeat and subsequent execution of the latter in 1811 put a partial stop to the insurrection; but the atrocities committed under the sanction of the new viceroy, Calleja, exasperated the people, and gave an irresistible impulse to the revolutionary cause. Guerrero and Iturbide in turn gained signal advantages over the Spaniards. For a time, Iturbide maintained a self-established imperial rule over the colony; but on the downfall consequent on his tyrannical abuse of power, a constitutional mode of government was inaugurated, and in 1824 the independence of Mexico, which had chosen a federal republican form of government, was finally established, and in the following year definitely recognized by every foreign power, except Spain.

The Mexican war was stained with excesses and atrocities on both sides; but it must be confessed that the Spaniards gained an unenviable preeminence in regard to the wanton cruelty which characterized their method of conducting hostilities. With them the war was one of extermination, every commander being allowed, at his own discretion, to hunt down and slaughter the insurgents like brutes. The welfare of the new republic was unhappily disturbed by constant outbreaks of civil war under the leadership of the Escosses or aristocratic faction, and the Yorkinos, or democrats; and the history of a quarter of a century during which Mexico has exercised independent power, leaves little to recount beyond ever-recurring acts of violence, and the rapid and summary deposition of one president after another.

In 1836, Texas secured its independence of the Mexican republic, for which it had struggled for several years, and at the same period differences arose with France, which were, however, brought to a peaceful conclusion after the taking of Vera Cruz in 1838 by the French troops. In 1841, General Santa Anna, on the retirement of Bustamente, succeeded in regaining the direction of affairs, from which he had been more than once deposed, and under the title of Dictator, exercised the power of an autocratic ruler. In 1845, Mexico was compelled to recognize the independence of Texas, which was incorporated with the United States, whose troops having entered the Mexican territory, provoked a declaration of war on the part of the Mexican government.

Hostilities were carried on with great energy by