et living, and who entertain not the remotest idea of dying,
who remember Mexico as a Spanish dependency quite as submissive to
Viceroy Iturrigaray as Cuba is now to Captain-General Serrano; and who
have seen her both an Empire and a Republic, and the theatre of more
revolutions than England has known since the days of the Octarchy. The
mere thought of the changes that have occurred there bewilders the mind;
and the inhabitants of orderly countries, whether that order be the
consequence of despotism or of constitutionalism, wonder that society
should continue to exist in a country where government appears to be
unknown.

Less than fifty years cover the time between the appearance of Hidalgo
and that of Miramon; and between the dates of the leaderships of the two
men, Mexico has had an army of generals, of whom little is now known
beyond their names. Hidalgo, Morelos, Mina, Bravo, Iturbide, Guerrero,
Bustamente, Victoria, Pedraza, Gomez Farias, Paredes, and Herrera,--such
are the names that were once familiar to our countrymen in connection
with Mexican affairs. We have now a new race of Mexican
chiefs,--Alvarez, Comonfort, Zuloaga, Uraga, Juarez, Vidaurri, Haro y
Tamariz, Degollado, and Miramon. Some of these last-named chiefs might,
perhaps, be classed with those first named, from years and services; but
whatever of political importance they have belongs to the present time;
and the most important man of them all, Miramon, is said to be very
young, and was not born until many years after the last vestiges of the
vice-regal rule had been removed. Santa Ana, but for his shifting round
so often,--now an absolute ruler, and then an absolute runaway, yet ever
contriving to get the better of his antagonists, whether they happen to
be clever Mexicans or dull Americans,--might be called the isthmus that
connects the first generation of leaders with that which now misleads
his country. Santa Ana's public life synchronizes with the independence
of Mexico of foreign rule, and his career can hardly be pronounced at an
end. It would be of the nature of a newspaper coincidence, were he to
know his "last of earth" at the very time when, by all indications,
Mexico stands in greater danger of losing her national life than she has
known since the day when Barradas was sent to play the part of Cortes,
but proved himself not quite equal to that of Narvaez. Santa Ana owed
much of his power to his victory over the Spaniards in 1830, though