corps de armee, led by one whose commission would place him properly at the head of a brigade, and nobly led, too.  Here, when so favourable an occasion offers to add a regiment or two to the old permanent line of the army, and thus infuse new life into its hope deferred, the opportunity is overlooked, and the rank and file are to be obtained by cramming, instead of by a generous regard to the interests of the gallant gentlemen who have done so much for the honour of the American name, and, unhappily, so little for themselves.  The extra-patriots of the nation, and they form a legion large enough to trample the “Halls of the Montezumas” under their feet, tell us that the reward of those other patriots beneath the shadows of the Sierra Madre, is to be in the love and approbation of their fellow citizens, at the very moment when they are giving the palpable proof of the value of this esteem, and of the inconstancy of popular applause, by pointing their fingers, on account of an inadvertent expression in a letter, at the gallant soldier who taught, in our own times, the troops of this country to stand up to the best appointed regiments of England, and to carry off victory from the pride of Europe, in fair field-fights.  Alas! alas! it is true of nations as well as of men, in their simplest and earliest forms of association, that there are “secrets in all families;” and it will no more do to dwell on our own, than it would edify us to expose those of poor Mexico.

The discourse between the Senor Montefalderon and Mulford was interesting, as it ever has been when the former spoke of his unfortunate country.  On the subject of the battles of May he was candid, and admitted his deep mortification and regrets.  He had expected more from the force collected on the Rio Grande, though, understanding the northern character better than most of his countrymen, he had not been as much taken by surprise as the great bulk of his own nation.

“Nevertheless, Don Henrique,” he concluded, for the voice of Spike was just then heard as he was descending the stairs of the light-house, “nevertheless, Don Henrique, there is one thing that your people, brave, energetic, and powerful as I acknowledge them to be, would do well to remember, and it is this—­no nation of the numbers of ours can be, or ever was conquered, unless by the force of political combinations.  In a certain state of society a government may be overturned, or a capital taken, and carry a whole country along with it, but our condition is one not likely to bring about such a result.  We are of a race different from the Anglo-Saxon, and it will not be easy either to assimilate us to your own, or wholly to subdue us.  In those parts of the country, where the population is small, in time, no doubt, the Spanish race might be absorbed, and your sway established; but ages of war would be necessary entirely to obliterate our usages, our language, and our religion from the peopled portions of Mexico.”