as a rule, not of the shy, scholastic order, but possessed of talent for oratory and bustling affairs. They take posts in Congress, and are appointed as cabinet ministers. General Riva Palacio, Juan Mateos, Prieto, Paz, Altamirano, Justo Sierra, Peza, are deputies; Payno, a senator; Cuellar, who wrote under the pseudonym of "Facundo," a secretary of legation. These are the native writers whose works are more frequently in the hands of the public than any others.
Prieto, who is chiefly a poet, however, has written a book of his travels in the United States, in which some amusing things will be discovered. He finds that with us "the totality [ lo colectivo ] is grand and admirable, but the individual egoistic and vulgar." He saw Booth's Theatre, which is all of white marble ( el Teatro de Both, todo de marmol blanco ); and, besides our hotels, the establishment which we call a "Boarding" ( el Boarding ). The Hudson and East rivers, he says, are two arms of the sea, which freeze in winter, and even the immense quantity of ice collected from these does not suffice for the demands of the summer.
The poetical talent, of which we had a premonition in Cuba, is that which principally abounds. There is plentiful skill in versifying, with here and there a strain of something very much higher, in the volumes of the numerous authors. Prieto, above-mentioned, is found principally a poet of "occasions." He writes for the unveiling of statues, to steam, electricity, and the like. Juan Mateos strikes a fierce patriotic note. Altamirano, a fiery Indian orator, who models himself in Congress rather after Mirabeau, chooses as his themes for poetry bees, oranges, poppies, morn, the pleasures of rural life. They are excellent subjects in themselves, but it is an artificial, and not a real, existence he describes. He
