erator
of his countrymen; and that person was his mother. A mother, as a rule,
always in her imagination anticipates a brilliant future for her boy. If
Bolivar's mother was not an exception to this rule, surely her highest
anticipations were fully realized in the wonderful career of her son.

His father, Juan Vincente Bolivar y Ponte, and his mother, Maria
Concepcion Palacios y Sojo, were descendants of noble families in
Venezuela. Nothing unusual occurred in his school-boy days to
distinguish him from others of his age and rank. He was attentive to his
studies, warm-hearted, generous, and always a favorite among his
associates. When he had made sufficient advancement in his studies at
home, and had arrived at the proper age, he was sent to Madrid, where he
remained several years, during which time he completed his education.

Bolivar was now a full-grown man, and as a source of needed recreation
after years of hard study, he spent some time in visiting places of
special interest in the south of Europe. On his journey he stopped for a
time at the French capital, where he witnessed the closing scenes of the
French revolution. This was the hour of Napoleon's greatest glory. He
was the acknowledged military hero of the age. All France bowed at his
feet. Is it not probable that here was where Bolivar caught the
inspiration that led him to make an effort to be to his own country,
what Napoleon was to France? From Paris Bolivar returned to Madrid,
where, in 1801, he married the daughter of Don N. Toro, uncle of the
Marquis of Toro, in Caracas. He soon sailed with his young bride for his
native country, but it was only a little while until she fell a victim
to yellow fever. The sudden and unexpected death of his young wife, to
whom he was intensely devoted, so shattered his health and frustrated
his plans, that he wended his way back to Europe, where he remained
until 1809, when he returned through the United States to his own
country. His remembrance of the closing scenes of the French revolution,
and the realization as he passed through the United States of the
blessings of her free institutions, no doubt account in some measure for
the fact that, as soon as he reached Venezuela, he joined the movement
then crystallizing into an aggressive warfare for independence, and a
larger degree of freedom for his own countrymen.

In 1810 he received a colonel's commission from the revolutionary junta,
and was associated with Luis Lo