Alexius. How long has thou been walking here? Sentinel. The matter of an hour. Alexius. And what thoughts have come and gone in thy head? Alexius. What was thy first thought? Sentinel. I bethought me that the wind was easterly, and one ought to hear the waves break upon the Symplegades. Alexius. What was thy second thought? Sentinel. I thought when the moon rose I should see the tops of the fig-trees at Galatà; that's my birthplace. Alexius. And thy third? Sentinel. I thought if I was to fall to-morrow, I could like it were thereabouts. Alexius. Thy fourth? Sentinel. I thought when Count Isaac was emperor, he would be for recasting the army; and I shall tell him I was getting old in the service, and could like to be one of the immortals. Alexius. That I'll be bound for him thou shalt.'-p. 103–105. Throughout the play the author has succeeded better in the delineations of his elect than of his reprobates. There is some supererogatory wickedness in the priests, especially in the patriarch; and the suspicious fearfulness of the emperor is, in some parts, overcharged-with these exceptions, the characters are as finely delineated as they are distinctly imagined. The diction is always good, neither spangled with affectations nor distorted by the efforts of an ambitious and stilted style. If this be the first production of the author, much may be hoped from one who has begun so well. ART. VII.-Memoirs of General Miller in the Service of the Republic of Peru. By John Miller. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1828. WILLIAM MILLER, the subject of this memoir—in which we find more of novelty and entertainment than in a score of modern novels and romances-was born on the 2d of December, 1795, in the pleasant village of Wingham, near Canterbury, where his father was a small tradesman-we believe a baker. Of the events which characterized the progress of his early life we are told nothing, except that he served with the British army (from no regiment being mentioned, we suppose on the commissariat), both in the Peninsula and North America, from 1811 to 1815; and that, on the reduction at the latter period, an opportunity presented itself by which, had he turned his attention to mercantile pursuits, he might have become a partner in a French house of great respectability. But young Miller had not been a cold spec tator tator of war, and his genius had taken a bent which rendered the dull routine of the counting-house intolerable to him. After a short trial he relinquished the design of advancing his fortunes by means of commerce, and imagining that a fine field of enterprise was presented in the condition of Spanish South America, then struggling for independence in all its provinces, he determined to do as many others of his countrymen had done before him, by making a tender of his military services to one or other of the republics. In his mode of carrying this determination into practice, Miller exhibited a striking proof of that sagacity and sound judgment which so eminently distinguished him in all his after career. Having ascertained that comparatively few English candidates for military fame had made the district of the river Plata the theatre of their exertions, he came to the wise resolution of choosing that for his future country; and accordingly set sail, in the month of August, 1817, in a trading vessel, bound from the Downs to Buenos Ayres. Having taken the precaution to provide himself with recommendatory letters to several respectable merchants settled in that city, Mr. Miller, whose personal appearance, if his portrait speaks truth, is eminently handsome and engaging, and whose manners and address chance (we are told) to be peculiarly advantageous, encountered none of those obstacles to first success which so frequently blight the hopes of the mere adventurer. On the contrary, he was welcomed with the utmost cordiality and treated with the greatest kindness by his countrymen, through one of whom, Mr. Dickson, he obtained a personal introduction to the supreme director Puyrredon; and his memorial, addressed to the latter personage was, within a reasonable space, answered by the receipt of a captain's commission in the Buenos Ayrean army. He was appointed, moreover, according to his own desire, to the army of the Andes, then serving in Chili, under the orders of General San Martin; and he lost no time in making such preparations as appeared necessary to enable him to enter, with satisfaction to himself, upon the duties and perils of a campaign. Neither in Buenos Ayres, nor elsewhere, are appointments received or preparations made in a day, and Mr. Miller seems to have enjoyed some months of leisure previous to his embarkation on his military career. Of this breathing-time one portion was spent in enjoying the festivities of colonial society, another in visiting the interior; an expedition which brought at once within his observation all the wonders, animate and inanimate, of the Pampas. These appear to have produced in Mr. Miller the same feelings which Captain Head experienced, and has so well described; but the progress of his journey introduced the for VOL. XXXVIII. NO. LXXVI. 2 G .mer mer to one spectacle at least such as the latter had no opportunity of witnessing, and which, under his peculiar circumstances, could hardly fail of exciting a powerful, if not a very pleasant, sensation. The spectacle to which we now allude was that of a few fellow-creatures groaning under a destiny more terrible than frequently falls to the lot of human nature; and as it could not but occur to the person who beheld them, that a similar fate might before long be his own, we are not surprised to find that he looked upon it with a deep and melancholy interest. Mr. Miller proceeded, in company with four Buenos Ayrean gentlemen, to visit an estancia or grazing farm, situated in a remote district, not far from the borders of Patagonia. On the 30th of October, the party crossed the river Salado; and at five p.m. reached a station called Los dos Talos. It consisted of four miserable hovels, one of which was used as a pulperia, or shop and public-house, whilst the other three were occupied by thirty-eight Spanish officers, who had been made prisoners of war at Monte Video in 1814. These unhappy gentlemen, after serving throughout the greater part of the war in the Peninsula, which they quitted so lately as 1813, fell into the hands of the Buenos Ayreans, by whom they were condemned to subsist in this secluded district, upon rations of beef and salt, without any other allowance. Within the space of a hundred miles round, there was not a human being with whom they could hold friendly converse, for the neighbouring estancias were occupied wholly by Gauchos, whose antipathy to the Spaniards knew no bounds; and a basin of milk occasionally, but rarely given to them, was the only act of kindness for which they had cause to be thankful. After enduring this horrible banishment for some time, ten of these unfortunate hidalgos, headed by a Major Livinia, resolved, at all hazards, to attempt their escape. They accordingly fled from Los dos Talos, with the design of making their way to Chili, then in possession of the royalists, and trusting to find shelter and protection, by the way, among the savage Indians; but after enduring privations, under which seven miserably perished, the three survivors were compelled to return and surrender themselves once more to a patriot outpost. They were immediately removed back to their old station, where they had ever since remained, in a state, both of body and mind, the most deplorable. The Major, in particular, with whose relatives in the mother country Mr. Miller happened to be acquainted, was in a pitiable condition. His beard had grown to his chin, his countenance was ghastly, and his figure emaciated; his eyes had become diseased, and were but indifferently screened from the glare of day, by an old sack hung up before them; and he lay upon a sort of truckle bed, composed of two or three rugs placed upon cross sticks, run into the mud wall wall at one end, and fastened on the other to upright sticks driven into the earthen floor. With respect to the furniture of the hovel, which contained no fewer than twelve inmates, it consisted of a three-legged stool, ten inches high, and covered with a woollen rag, upon which the poor invalid occasionally sat, leaning against a wall, the dampness of which was in part kept off by a piece of canvass battened upon sticks; while a long plank, having its extremities supported between the horns of two bullocks' sculls, supplied the place of a bench for the rest of the company. Some clasp and case knives and forks, a few horn spoons, a kettle or two, a frying pan, a ramrod, to supply the place of a spit, a couple of gridirons, an earthen dish, and about a dozen broken cups and saucers, constituted the sum of household utensils at the disposal of the entire group. A few lassos and balas, indeed, hung upon the wall, but they were seldom used, because one or two only of the prisoners were permitted to mount on horseback at a time; and as even this favour depended upon the caprice of an officer of Gaucho militia, it could very rarely be obtained. To complete the picture of utter misery, our traveller was assured by his new acquaintances, that soap was a luxury of which they knew nothing, and the general filth and squalor of their appearance gave testimony that the complaint was not made without reason. It will readily be imagined that Mr. Miller contemplated such a scene, not only with pity, but with a far livelier and deeper feeling. He did his best, we are told, to cheer these miserable men; but we must hurry over the particulars of his interview with them, as well as the remainder of this excursion, that we may follow him at once to the seat of war. On the 6th of January, 1818, Captain Miller set out for Buenos Ayres, provided with a passport and fifty dollars, as bounty money from the government. Travelling post, a distance of three hundred leagues, he reached, at the close of the ninth day, the town of Mendoza, a large place, situated in an extensive and well-cultivated plain at the foot of the Andes, and holding the rank of capital in the province of Cayo. Its most remarkable feature is a fine alameda or public promenade, sheltered on either hand by rows of poplar,-a tree so highly esteemed in the province, that the Spaniard who introduced it was, by an express decree of the revolutionary government, excepted from the hostility shown to his countrymen, declared to be exempted from the payment of all direct taxes, and taken under the especial protection of the ruling power. Here our traveller delayed a few days, partly that he might recover from the fatigues of past exertions-partly that he might be a witness to the peculiarly simple and innocent habits of the 2G 2 people; people; after which, he addressed himself to the arduous and toilsome task of crossing the Andes. Captain Miller followed the Pass of Uspallata, by which means he reached Santiago, a distance of eighty-three leagues, about noon on the fourth day. Of the solitary grandeur of that stupendous region, no one, who has not traversed it, can form any adequate conception. From the hour that the wayfaring man enters upon it, till he arrive at the opposite side of the range, all trace, not only of human industry, but, we had almost said, of animated nature, is lost. The road leads, indeed, from ridge to ridge, so completely thrust among the clouds, that the torrents, whose roar is distinctly heard beneath, can rarely be seen; whilst to meet even the stag-like gaze of the guanco, or to watch the solitary condor, as with motionless wings he floats overhead, is felt as a positive relief to the weary senses. Nor is the passage made good without danger,-real as well as imaginary. The snow, on many of the highest table-lands, when melted by the sun, assumes an irregular and broken surface, and offers but an insecure footing to mules and horses,-which, sinking into it, are sometimes entirely lost, and never extricated without extreme difficulty; and, as the strange noises, made by the wind, come through the long deep valleys upon the ear of the guide, he rarely fails to add to the horrors of such actual calamities, by recounting stories of travellers who have perished there already, and whose souls are still believed to haunt the vicinity of their unburied remains. Subject to all these inconveniences, Captain Miller held his course. He crossed the rich and fertile valley of Chile; halted for a day or two in Santiago; and, finally, came up, on the 26th, with the army of San Martin, in bivouac, at Las Tablas, near Valparaiso. The nucleus of the army of the Andes, to which Captain Miller attached himself, was formed in 1814, out of the remains of several corps, which, under different leaders, had suffered, one after another, defeats. Two whole years were spent in its organization, and at the end of that period it amounted to no more than four thousand regular troops, tolerably well clothed and armed, besides a considerable number of mere militia. At the head of this force, San Martin proposed to carry the war into Chile, then defended by Captain General Marco, at the head of nearly eight thousand regular, and eight hundred irregular troops. But as he was not competent to take his adversary in front, he resolved to deceive him, if possible, into a division of his strength; and then attacking him in detail, to complete the liberation of a province, where he had every reason to be convinced that a strong revolutionary spirit prevailed. San Martin assembled his army at Mendoza about midsummer |