association. Yet it is a pleasant surprise to one unfamiliar with modern authorship in Mexico to find the Muse so entirely at home, as the little volume, from which the subsequent translations are taken, would indicate. Under any circumstances, a book containing upon its titlepage the names of fifty poets "of reputation and popularity" might be considered worthy attention, even without a preface apologizing for the ungraciousness of being obliged to choose so few among the ranks of representative writers. A country which can count its native poets in such whole-sale numbers would certainly seem to have more than its average share.
The plan of the work is unique. Eighty or ninety pen pictures of Mexican women of position, distinguished among their associates for beauty, for talent, or for the higher grace of fascination, form its contents. A prologue, which might better be called a rhapsody, vindicates its motive. "Never has the loveliness or the virtue of woman shone more resplendently than when lifted upon the wings of poetry into the realms of the ideal; as when proclaimed in rhythmic cadence by the lyre of the poet, whose sensitive and passionate
