ITALICA-CUESTA AND PALOS. is eminently unclassic and utiliThere are several pleasant ex- tarian; and, after all, a good road cursions around Seville-to Itali- is a better thing than an amphica, for instance, where we are theatre, where wild beasts and carried back in Roman history to wilder men bearded each other to that Scipio, who defeated Hanni- the inhuman shouts of a Roman bal, and who founded this city mob. Rome herself has left us A. U. C. 547. It was also the roads which will eternize her betbirth-place of three Roman Em- ter civilization, while her bloody perors-Trajan, Adrian and The- games but tarnish the pictured odosius. But of all its Roman page of her story. life nothing remains only the Not far from Italica, is the vil ruins of an Amphitheatre, which, lage of Cuesta a village of, perhad Time, the adorner of ruins, haps, a dozen mean houses-yet been let alone, would still exist it is the death-place of a life unalmost equal to the Coliseum at Rome.

"The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who

was he?"

eclipsed in glory and in crime.In one of the meanest houses, over the door of a shed-room, ten feet square, more fit for a pig-sty than for a human habitation, read these words; "HERE DIED HERNANDO CORTEZ, A VICTIM TO

The lazy Spaniard-the unpoetic corporation of Seville. Towards the close of the eighteenth century, a large portion of the DISGRACE AND SORROW, THE materials was removed and em- GLORY OF SPAIN, THE CONQUERployed in constructing a Royal OR OF MEXICO-HE EXPIRED Road to Badajos. The spoliations DEC. 2, 1547." This squalid spot thus effected have much impaired -such a death-chamber-such an the grandeur of the structure as it end of such a career-is likely to stood in its prime, or even as it make older heads than schoolmight have been seen a hundred boys, and wiser men than weeping years ago, like the melancholy philosophers, dream dreams of mausoleum of an Empire's dust, human vanity, and take knowlhalf-buried in earth and all over- edge of "what shadows we are spread with herbage and vines: and what shadows we pursue.”

"Cypress and ivy, weed and wall-flow

I spent a day or too in an excursion to Palos- the little seaport whence Columbus sailed, after eighteen years of hope deferred, on his voyage of discovery, and to which, within eight months, he returned the successful discoverer, whom all the world have since delighted to honor. I need not describe it. There is, in truth, not much to describe; and, besides, the graceful pen of Mr. Irving,

Yet assuredly nothing is here for tears, and we may well restrain our vain regrets over the demolition of this stupendous pile. Our age who visited Palos in 1828, has pre

ceded me in the task. Nothing and dwindled down to not more can be added in point of style or than three hundred inhabitants. of information to his graphic ac- The white walls of La Rabida rise count, which may be found in the conspicuously on its neighboring 3rd vol. of his Columbus. There hill amid a dark forest of pine trees. But of what we expect as in some measure suggestive of the lofty enterprise of Columbus-of

was no change in the condition of things since the period of his visit. Mr. Ford, it is true, in his "Handbook of Spain," says the Govern- Palos, the sea-port, with its bust

ment had ordered, in 1846, the Convent of La Rabida to be fitted up as an asylum for invalid soldiers. I observed, however, no preparations of that sort; and it is to be hoped none will be made. The Convent should rather remain, while time lasts, dedicated to the same uses and preserved as much as possible in the same state as when Columbus, wearied with

ling commerce; not even a wreck is left to tell the tale; no trace of a wharf or landing-place or warehouse, or barque or harbor, where proud navies might ride; absolutely nothing! So the mind, undisturbed by mere perishable memorials of the past, is all the more sadly awe-impressed by the amplitudes of natural scenery-of earth and sky and sea, which en

and the simple grandeur of the scene whence he embarked on his heroic voyage. We admire that Providence which, through much tribulation, at last sent him

SO

his long journey on foot, begged dure forever. We feel, after all, that at its humble gate for bread and there is a harmony between water for his little boy. Touch- the heroic character of Columbus ing it is, indeed, and more like the ways of God than any other event in the divinely-guided life of the Discoverer, that, cast off by Princes and Nobles, his wandering feet should have been directed forth from this obscure place, as hither to this by-corner of Spain, another Nazareth, to bless the where he found a welcome sympa- nations and to double the area of thy for his sufferings, and an intelligent appreciation of his great argument. There is, too, in beholding the earth, the sky, the sea about Palos, a certain mournful awe, which one does not realize on scarcely any other spot rendered immortal by what is greatest in human thought or in human action: for there is only norant, and as scarcely knowing earth and sky and sea left here to even the name of America. He connect us in imagination with is doubtless correct. I am not the grandest idea and most peril- sure, however, but we deserve to ous adventure known to the mod- be forgotten and unknown in that ern age. The little village, in- memorable locality, till we learn deed, remains miserably decayed to show them better treatment.

the world. Undoubtedly, if the finger of God had not indicated the way, the shore-line of the globe itself hardly contains a port which had not been rather selected as the point of departure for such an expedition.

Mr. Irving represents the inhabitants of Palos as totally igThey see the face of an American ed. They were formed, indeed, almost never. We pass by on the and specially endowed for the proother side even to places of far digious work given them to do; less interest. This is not well. - nor did they do it negligently.America is a great debtor to Besides an intense love of country Palos, which should be a Mecca and a burning zeal for "the to every American in Spain. Her Faith," they illustrated superbly intrepid seamen were the earliest a proud contempt of pleasure, an companions and coadjutors of untamed spirit of adventure, an Columbus-many of them, it is unconquerable energy and a catrue, forced into his perilous ser- pacity for endurance, which device-but still they were by his fied hunger and thirst, cold and side on the unfathomed waste of heat, want and nakedness, disease waters, and stood to their work, and death. Of such stern stuff all things considered, with com- to will and to do and to suffer, mendable resolution and fortitude. were these men made. Such Yet we go on, by a kind of bathos, were the splendid qualities which christening our towns and villa- have cast a halo even around their ges after Rome and Athens and crimes. But we look in vain for Corinth and Utica, while Palos, their like among their descendwhose history is indissolubly link- ants. The contrast in the Andaed to ours, is still unhonored and lusian of this century is painful. unsung.

He seems incapable of high resolve or of high endeavor. There he goes lazily about his easy work, or rather there he lies sprawling, the live long day, listlessly, in the

One is struck everywhere in this part of the Peninsular with the falling off in the character of the population, compared to what that character was three hundred shade, loquacious, indolent, unyears ago. It is known to all warlike. If he rouses up to effort who are familiar with the early at all, it is spasmodically and settlement and conquest of Span- wildly wasted in frolic and sport. ish America, that the race of men, How is this? Is it that Spain, most of whom were from the in a single century of superhuman Province of Andalusia, sent out energy, spent all her vigor and by Spain for a century after the vitality? Just as among indidiscovery of the New World- viduals sometimes an over-strain the followers of Columbus and brings exhaustion for long after Vasco Nunez, of Cortez and it, if not death itself. Is it that Pizarro-never had an equal, if a Andalusian manhood is not dead rival, in hardy virtues and heroic - but only dormant? Or must we exertions. The most stirring rather search for the cause of events of our North American this radical change of character history-even our Plymouth Rock in the laws and policies of Spain? and our Jamestown, it must be With our thoughts employed on owned, read like dull, tedious an- the solution of this problem, we nals by the side of what they

mightily did and mightily suffer

return to Seville.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

THE MEN IN GREY.

Our conquered heroes homeward came,
Gone from their eyes the glance of flame
Marked on their brows the touch of shame

And walking wearily.

In tattered coats of dear old grey,
In dusty, weary, worn array,
Their banners-flaunting once and gay,

Now drooping drearily.

Ah! different from the longed for day
When back would come the dear old grey,
With glory crowned, with victory gay

As Hope had painted them.
There was no trumpet's stirring sound,
No smiles of triumph circling round,
But flags that trailed along the ground,

Red with blood that sainted them.

Yet these had fought in Freedom's cause
And known nor let, nor doubt, nor pause;

They gloried in the glorious scars,

That sealed their souls to liberty.

They rushed in whirlwinds to the fight

They swept the foe, before their might

They gave their blood and lives for right,

Their sacred soil, and victory.

They fainted in the summer's heat

They marked the snow with bleeding feet

They starved, and fought, in cold and sleet

And bore their banners haughtily.

They waited in their dungeons dim,

They smiled amidst the rigors grim

Of faithless foes, and raised the hymn

Of Hope still loftily.

They saw their blazing homesteads fall,

And misery like a funeral pall,

Dark lowering, slow envelope all,

That Earth held dear to them.

But, guiding still, through faint and far,
They saw the rays of Freedom's star,

And dared the utmost curse of war

To bring it near to them.

With hope serene, devotion high
Unwavering hearts, unflinching eye-
Their very women learned to die,

As died the heroes teaching them.

Four years their deeds of glory shone,
They bore the battle up alone,

The World against them, and their own

Strong hearts supporting them.

man."

PERFECT THROUGH SUFFERING.

BY FANNY DOWNING,

CHAPTER IV.

"Grand-father, do you consider

women inferior animals?"

"Called woman because taken out of been made to occupy the lower position. Just think of Adam! Eat as many apples as he wanted, then when the trouble came, instead of standing up boldly and meeting it, he turned round on "the woman, which THOU gavest me!" A double thrust, Grandpa, and you can neither deny, nor de

The speaker, a slight slip of a girl about seventeen, was perched up in an arm chair so large, that her trim figure bore the same relative proportion to the amount of green morocco by which she fend it! And it has been so ever was surrounded, that a small is- since we have to bear the blame land does to a huge lake. "My of everything! I wish I was a dear, I do not consider them animals of any sort!" was the mildly admonishing reply as the old gentleman pushed back his spectacles, shut up the book, he was reading; and looked kindly at the young "speaker. "Well, but do you con"Why, Charley, my child, these sider them inferior, Grandpa? are very peculiar sentiments for I have been reading St. Paul's so young a girl!-where did you Epistles, and he certainly does'nt seem to have a very exalted opinion of my sex!"

"St. Paul was so exalted himself, and had such a high standard of excellence, that "

"But Grandpa, it has been so from the beginning, and we have

man!-they take all the cream off existence, and leave us the bluest kind of skim milk! I suppose it must be so till the end of the world, for as we all know, woman is God's arriére pensée."

get them?”

"From nature, I think, Grandpa. She intended me for a boy I know, and I do wish she had carried her intention into effect! Was'nt I named Charles Lee Preston before I was born? Am I not a living reproduction of Aunt