more prosaic countries. Spain is virtually a land of
poetry and romance, where every-day life partakes of adventure, and where
the least agitation or excitement carries every thing up into extravagant
enterprise and daring exploit. The Spaniards in all ages have been of
swelling and braggart spirit, soaring in thought, and valiant though
vainglorious in deed. When the nation had recovered in some degree from
the storm of Moslem invasion, and sage men sought to inquire and write the
particulars of the tremendous reverses which it produced, it was too late
to ascertain them in their exact verity. The gloom and melancholy that had
overshadowed the land had given birth to a thousand superstitious fancies;
the woes and terrors of the past were clothed with supernatural miracles
and portents, and the actors in the fearful drama had already assumed the
dubious characteristics of romance. Or if a writer from among the
conquerors undertook to touch upon the theme, it was embellished with all
the wild extravagances of an oriental imagination, which afterward stole
into the graver works of the monkish historians. Hence the chronicles are
apt to be tinctured with those saintly miracles which savor of the pious
labors of the cloister, or those fanciful fictions that betray their
Arabian Authors. Scarce one of their historical facts but has been
connected in the original with some romantic fiction, and even in its
divorced state, bears traces of its former alliance. The records in
preceding pages are 'illuminated' by these prefatory remarks of our
author, if their _truth_ be not altogether established! How the Count
JULIAN receives the account of the dishonor of his child, and his conduct
thereupon; and how DON RODERICK hastens, through various tribulation, to
his final overthrow; will be matter for another number. Meanwhile the
reader will not fail to note the great beauty of the descriptions, which
in the hands of our great master of the power and beauty of 'the grand old
English tongue,' assume form and color, and stand out like living pictures
to the eye.

AMERICAN PTYALISM: 'QUID RIDES?'--A pleasant correspondent, whom our
readers have long known, and as long admired and esteemed, in a familiar
gossip, (by favor of 'Uncle SAMUEL'S mail-bag,) with the Editor, gives us
the following 'running account' of his ruminations over an early-morning
quid of that 'flavorous weed' so well beloved of our friend Colonel STONE.
It is in some