always poor. In 1774, he lived at Edinburgh, and gained his livelihood by teaching the French language; he then published a work called The Chains of Slavery,' with an address to the electors of Great Britain. The honours which were decreed to Marat proved the awfully demoralised state of the times; he was buried in the garden of the Cordeliers-his favourite den, from whence he poured out his iniquity by reading his inflammatory paper to the people. One blasphemous fanatic, in a declamation eulogising the deceased monster, said, 'Oh Marat! Jesus Christ was an angel, but thou wert a God!'

We learn that Madame Tussaud has been thirty-six years in England, and that if her reminiscences of France be favourably received, she will be emboldened to do that for her sitters in England which she was in the habit of doing for the great or notorious ones across the channel. Perhaps some may think that this promise comes late considering her very advanced age at this moment; but the expectants who have enjoyed the gossipping of the present volume may take comfort to themselves, after we inform them that she is descended from a family remarkable for their longevity, that one of them lived to the age of ninety, another to that of a hundred and four, and another to that of a hundred and eleven. So, take comfort ye readers of light and interesting chat; Mr. Hervé and Madame, wedded as they at present are, will not disappoint you, or be found inferior to hundreds who advance even higher pretensions.

ART. IK.-Six Years in Biscay: comprising a Personal Narrative of the Sieges in Bilbao, in June, 1835, and December, 1836. By JOHN FRANCIS BACON. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1838.

THIS is an impartial and cleverly-executed sketch of the most interesting period of the contest which is now desolating the Peninsula, and which promises to be interminable. Public curiosity has ceased to be aroused by victories which end in nothing, and defeats which allow the discomfited party to take the field the day after. Each succeeding winter sees Don Carlos recruiting his forces in the Basque provinces, to sally forth with returning spring to lay waste the province of Castile, while in the interim small bands are launched forth to ravish the country with the speed and cruelty of a horde of Tartars, burning, plundering, collecting troops, and harrassing the Queen's forces with endless marching. Scarcely can we summon patience to continue to peruse the accounts of the exploits of those leaders whom every day brings forth, and who are all equally insignificant and ruthless. The fact is, both parties seem to be anxious to prolong the contest; guerilla warfare, plunder, and butchery, is too congenial to the taste of the people to be easily laid aside, and nothing but the armed troops of the hostile invader, or the famine which their devastations have rendered imminent,

will effectually part the combatants, or cause them to relax their gripes upon each other's throats.

The causes which have engendered and nurtured this fierce struggle have been so often and so ably discussed by public writers of all parties and of every shade of opinion that it would be superfluous for us to recapitulate them here. Mr. Bacon has left none of them untouched, and he has treated them all with great acuteness and candour. His long residence in the provinces of Biscay gave him particular opportunities of becoming thoroughly acquainted with the fueros of the Basques, and he has given a clear exposition in what those privileges really consisted.

The ecclesiastical aristocracy of Spain rested on a broad and a solid foundation. The consolidation of its power was the work of centuries, and its influence was widely and beneficially exercised through the community. Its easy familiarity with the peasantry maintained a feeling of equality and flattered that pride which is the characteristic of a race who boast that they acknowledge no superior. "Sois vos el Rey di Castilla ?" (Are ye the King of Castile?) said a Spanish farmer to King Ferdinand, standing with free and lofty carriage, covered head, and unembarrassed manner, in the presence of his sovereign. It may be easily imagined that the man, who could see nothing more than the public functionary in the monarch, would be more easily reconciled to the superiority of the ecclesiastical than the lay lord. The former was his neighbour, his familiar acquaintance, his adviser-he was a better landlord and a better man. If the convent was wealthy, its wealth was for the benefit of the people. The most exquisite pictures, the finest music, the richest plate, the most gorgeous ceremonials,-all the pomp and circumstance of glorious worship, were for them, for their gratification, for their benefit. In the church all met on equal terms. There were no barriers to hedge round a class, and separate the profanum vulgus from their wealthier neighbours, and remind them of their inferiority; and not only could the peasant look upon wealth and power, thus employed, without envy, but he looked upon it as his own. On the other hand, the lay lord, is an absentee, spending his rents at Madrid, and leaving his estate in the hands of his agent his sumptuous furniture, his paintings, his grounds, carefully screened from observation. Perhaps he is a spendthrift and inexorable: the ecclesiastical lord, easy of access, and yielding at once to a tale of a bad season, a missed crop, or any other of the many casualties that may befal his tenant. The economy of the convent renders a reduction no sacrifice. In addition to all this he dispenses the favours of heaven with a liberal hand. Can it then be a matter of wonder that the Spanish peasant sides with the clergy? and is it not a matter of surpassing wonder that the Cortes, both in 1812 and subsequently in 1821, with this deeply-rooted and widely-diffused veneration of the Spanish people for their clergy

before their eyes, demolish at one fell swoop all the monastic orders, and appropriate their revenues to the state? A more politic and less decisive course would have more speedily effected their design. Instead of sapping and mining, they proceeded to take the vast fabric by storm. Instead of disarming their hostility or pitting them against each other, they converted the whole army of monks into bitter and irreconcileable foes, and furnished their enemies with the most formidable weapons against themselves. The fact was, the middle classes had for centuries borne the weight of spiritual oppression; they were more conversant with foreigners and more alive to their degradation; they were burning for revenge, and when their time, as they fancied, was come, they struck boldly and blindly at the Colossus, but their blows recoiled upon themselves : they threw the whole mass into the arms of Don Carlos. Opposed by the higher and educated classes, the clergy fell back for support upon the lower orders; they anathematised their opponents as traitors in this world and rejected in the next: to destroy them was the most praiseworthy of human achievements. Thus the furious. and fierce fanaticism of myriads of peasants led on with perfect unity of purpose, is more than a match for the disjointed wavering and unimpassioned force of the superior classes. Nor has the spo liation of the monasteries added much to the available capital of the state, nor will it retard its bankruptcy by a single hour.

In conjunction with these spiritual influences in rousing the uncompromising hostility of the most compact and ancient race of the Spanish peninsula, may be noticed the no less important political influences of their fueros or privileges. These may be shortly stated as consisting of exemption from conscription-exemption from maintaining soldiers in time of peace-exemption from taxation, except of their own imposing, including freedom from customs duties on goods imported from foreign countries-the right possessed by the Basque who dwells beyond the Ebro, if accused of any offence, of bringing his case before the juez mayor at Valladolid, and the right of governing themselves according to their own usages and customs, the king nominating only one of their officers, the corregidor. These are the fueros of Biscay, Alava, and Guipuscoa, as contrasted with the rest of Spain. These exemptions threw an unjust burden on the other provinces, and the Madrid government was anxious at all times to do away with them. A measure of this kind was resolved upon in 1830, and a strong body of troops was collected under the command of General O'Donnell to enforce the act of abolition. Nor did Don Carlos, as has been erroneously asserted, offer any opposition to this measure: it is true, that, with his usual policy, he made a show of succumbing to it: he deplored the necessity of infringing the fueros, and recommended that it should be done gradually. It was to the revolution of July, and to the dread of French interference felt by Calomarde and the aposto

licals that the Basques were indebted for the suspension of the execution of the abolition scheme, the merit of which has been claimed by Don Carlos, and loudly vaunted by his party.

To the influence of the clergy was added the powerful influence of the lawyers. The escribanos form a numerous class in the Basque provinces, and they espoused the Carlist interest to a man. Thus while the monk hurled damnation on the soul of a heretic landlord, the escribano denounced confiscation against his lands, and the military powers held the sword over his head. Arguments like these were irresistible, and the authority of the Carlists was widely and firmly established.

The organization of the army was rapidly and skilfully conducted by the diputaciones in Biscay and Alava between 1823 and 1833. In Guipuscoa, the arrangements were not so active, as the presence of the Captain General and the garrison of Saint Sebastian offered an effective check to their proceedings.

The volunteers of Navarre were numerous, but inferior in equipment to those of the other provinces. At the first outbreak, the organised Carlist militia amounted to 57,000, with a further stock of 80,000 able to bear arms as a reserve, and an annual corps of at least 7000 for several years to come. This excellent organization of the provinces was owing to the exertions of Verastegui and Valdespina. To provide for the troops the whole province was divided into districts, and a commissary appointed for each. The number of rations of meat and bread supplied daily by the province of Biscay amounted to 10,290 or 72,030 weekly, equal to about 180 oxen, 108,045 pounds of bread, and 3,700 gallons of wine. The clothing of the troops was not so effectually provided for it was composed of cloth purchased in France or Bilbao, or stolen in marauding parties into Castile, and made up in the provinces. A certain quantity of cloth was sent to a town, with orders to have it converted into jackets and trowsers in a given time, and the authorities instantly set all hands in the town to work. In this manner, says Mr. Bacon, was clothed and fed, by a small country not containing the eighth part of its population, an army as numerous as that of Bavaria.

In the matter of the manufacture and repair of arms, the Carlists possessed advantages of a peculiar kind in the iron works of Biscay and Guipuscoa. The numerous hands employed in the manufacture of this metal are dispersed over the country: many towns, such as Eybar, Plasencia, Elgoybar, Elgueta, Durango, Ochandiano, Tolosa, Vergara, and Balmaseda, are entirely devoted to the manufacture of arms and ironmongery in general. Three thousand of the Carlist soldiers were enabled to repair and even make their own arms and accoutrements. In the manufacture of gunpowder they had advantages equally peculiar; their forests furnished inexhaustible supplies of charcoal, which the long practice of the charcoal-burners enabled them to make of a superior quality; sulphur and saltpetre were

obtained from France, and the friars worked incessantly at the manufactories at Onate and Ereno. The amount of money raised on the provinces by confiscations, customs, and subsidies, has been estimated at five millions of dollars, to say nothing of provisions, clothing, effects, and stores of all kinds, which may be computed at a very considerable sum. Thus we may observe that four provinces with a population, not exceeding that of Kent and Surrey, maintained, out of their own children, an army of 24,000 men, paid, clothed, and equipped them, and kept them recruited through a bloody war of four years; and now, when entering on the fifth campaign, the army is rather increased than otherwise.

To oppose this formidable force, the Queen had a nominal army amounting to 100,000 men, one half of which was officered by Carlists who neutralized its efficacy. Her government was surrounded by functionaries in the interest of her rival, busy in crippling and embarrassing its measures; and, most grievous of all the calamities, her exchequer was empty, and her government was burthened with an accumulated load of debt. Add to this the hollow conduct of Louis Phillipe, and it is not at all surprising that it should take four years of active warfare to test the materials of the military and civil services, and to purge them from concealed enemies.

The Carlists had contemplated a rising all over Spain. With dismay they heard that Queen Isabel had been recognized without opposition through all the provinces, and that forces were pouring into Burgos from every quarter to support her title. Then followed the defeat of the Alavese, the march of Sarsfield upon Vitoria, and his subsequent delivery of Bilbao. During the period of their occupation, the Carlists had mulcted the inhabitants at a fearful rate; and now they retired in rage, disappointment, and despair, crying out they had been deceived. Had Sarsfield followed close upon their heels and chastised the villagers for their past, and taken hostages for their future conduct, it is probable he would have crushed the enemies of the Queen at once. But what does he do? He publishes an indulto for 15 days, and then remains inactive. The Carlists laughed at his indulto, seized six gentlemen of Bilbao and put to death Muroaga, the treasurer of the province.

Sarsfield was replaced by Valdez in the command of the army of the north. This general had acquired a deservedly high reputation in Peru. He brought with him some new general officers, amongst others, Bedoya, Osma, Benedicto, and Espartero. The first three soon lost the little reputation they had; the last raised himself from a brigadier-general, in three years, to the post he now occupies of commander-in-chief of the Spanish armies. His predominant failing is said to be indecision-but he is capable of acting with startling energy on occasions. Although his conduct has been sometimes prejudicial to the cause, no doubt can be entertained of his being a zealous and faithful adherent to the queen. At the juncture we