Don Juan Montefalderon was struck with the boldness of Jack Tier’s plan, but refused his assent to it.  He deemed it too hazardous, but substituted a project of his own.  The moon would not rise until near eleven, and it wanted several hours before the time of sailing.  When they returned to the brig, he would procure his cloak, and scull himself ashore, being perfectly used to managing a boat in this way, under the pretence of wishing to pass an hour longer near the grave of his countryman.  At the expiration of that hour he would take Jack off, concealed beneath his cloak—­an exploit of no great difficulty in the darkness, especially as no one would be on deck but a hand or two keeping the anchor-watch.  With this arrangement, therefore, Jack Tier was obliged to be content.

Some fifteen or twenty minutes more passed; during which the Mexican again alluded to his country, and his regrets at her deplorable situation.  The battles of the 8th and 9th of May; two combats that ought to, and which will reflect high honour on the little army that won them, as well as on that hardly worked, and in some respects hardly used, service to which they belong, had been just fought.  Don Juan mentioned these events without reserve; and frankly admitted that success had fallen to the portion of much the weaker party.  He ascribed the victory to the great superiority of the American officers of inferior rank; it being well known that in the service of the “Republic of the North,” as he termed America, men who had been regularly educated at the military academy, and who had reached the period of middle life, were serving in the stations of captains, and sometimes in that of lieutenants; men who, in many cases, were fitted to command regiments and brigades, having been kept in these lower stations by the tardiness with which promotion comes in an army like that of this country.

Don Juan Montefalderon was not sufficiently conversant with the subject, perhaps, else he might have added, that when occasions do offer to bestow on these gentlemen the preferment they have so hardly and patiently earned, they are too often neglected, in order to extend the circle of vulgar political patronage.  He did not know that when a new regiment of dragoons was raised, one permanent in its character, and intended to be identified with the army in all future time, that, instead of giving its commissions to those who had fairly earned them by long privations and faithful service, they were given, with one or two exceptions, to strangers.

No government trifles more with its army and navy than our own.  So niggardly are the master-spirits at Washington of the honours justly earned by military men, that we have fleets still commanded by captains, and armies by officers whose regular duty it would be to command brigades.  The world is edified with the sight of forces sufficient, in numbers, and every other military requisite, to make one of Napoleon’s