And thou, young hero of this mimic scene,
    In whose high breast
  A genius greater than thy life hath been
    Strangely comprest!

  Wear’st thou those glories draped about thy soul
    Thou dost present? 
  And art thou by their feeling and control
    Thus eloquent?

  ’Tis with no feigned power thou bind’st our sense,
    No shallow art;
  Sure, lavish Nature gave thee heritance
    Of Hamlet’s heart!

  Thou dost control our fancies with a might
    So wild, so fond,
  We quarrel, passed thy circle of delight,
    With things beyond;

  Returning to the pillows rough with care,
    And vulgar food,
  Sad from the breath of that diviner air,
    That loftier mood.

  And there we leave thee, in thy misty tent
    Watching alone;
  While foes about thee gather imminent,
    To us scarce known.

  Oh, when the lights are quenched, the music hushed,
    The plaudits still,
  Heaven keep the fountain, whence the fair stream gushed,
    From choking ill!

  Let Shakspeare’s soul, that wins the world from wrong,
    For thee avail,
  And not one holy maxim of his song
    Before thee fail!

  So, get thee to thy couch as unreproved
    As heroes blest;
  And all good angels, trusted in and loved,
    Attend thy rest!

EL LLANERO.

  De todos los Generales cual es el mejor? 
  Es mi General Jose con su Guardia de Honor!

I.

THE HATO.

It is only within a century that the world has become habituated to behold the birth of nations, and already the spectacle has grown too common to attract more than transitory notice.  In the sluggish days that preceded the revolutionary efforts of our fathers, a nationality was fixed, seemingly immutable, the growth of scarcely numbered ages, the daughter of immemorial Time.  A people then could place its hand upon its title-deeds, and, looking back through half a score of centuries, trace its gradual development from nothingness to power.  To-day, on the contrary,—­to use a somewhat daring metaphor,—­nations have become autochthonous; they have repudiated the feeble processes of conception and tutelage; they spring, armed and full-grown, from the forehead of their progenitors, or rise, in sudden ripeness, from the soil.

Thousands must now be living, the citizens of prosperous states, who can recall the days when they had entered upon manhood and yet the name itself of their nation had no existence.  How many, indeed, are still among us, to whom nations owe the impetus that gave them birth!  Prominent, at least, among those who can lay claim to such distinction, there still stands one whose career it were well, perhaps, to study.  We will endeavor to profit by a glance at it.