a fairly high literary stamp, the language is well chosen, and considerable graces of style are often displayed in the composition of even a political leading article. But one is told that the Mexican journalist's style is in process of falling off, and that the efforts of the new school do not approach those of their predecessors in purity and elegance.
Of weekly journals, there is a supply sufficient for the needs of the community. El Mundo Illustrado, owned by the proprietors of El Imparcial, is well illustrated, bright, and informative, as is its rival El Mundo. Artes y Letres is a publication devoted to the connoisseur in the Arts and Literature; and its criticisms on books, pictures, and allied matters carry considerable weight. El Semanario Literario and La Revista Literaria are, as their names imply, literary reviews, both conducted with good taste and judgment. The comic Press is by no means of high grade, and dealing, as it does, chiefly in personalities, is offensive to most persons of refinement, however great its appeal to the vulgar and irreverent.
The haute littérature of Mexico, as has been said, is represented by a circle of purists who evince great anxiety as to the future of Mexican letters. Chief among these, Agüeros. perhaps, or at least typical of them, was the late Senor Agüeros. Of the high Conservative school of politics, a writer of accurate and polished Spanish, a journalist whose work was marked by thought and judgment, but who was by no means well disposed towards all that is liberal and modern, Victoriano Agüeros's most valuable work was undoubtedly that to which he had addressed himself of later years —the rehabilitation of Mexican authors in the sight of the Mexican people. Observing the neglect into which the national literature was falling and deploring the popular taste for the meretricious type of French fiction, Señor Agüeros set himself to counter-act this lamentable vogue by the publication, in uniform style, of the works of the best Mexican authors under the
