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WYCLIFFE.

THE doctrines of this Reformer, who, long prior to Luther, resisted the encroachments of the Pope, and promulgated the principal truths of the Great Reformation, had become so widely diffused, that the clergy became alarmed. Courtney, recently elevated to the See of London, and one of the most imperious churchmen of the age, had shown special opposition to the Duke of Lancaster, (John of Gaunt) the friend and patron of Wycliffe, in the sessions of the Assembly of 1376, called the "Good Parliament." At his instigation, the houses of Convocation met, on the third of February, 1377, and issued a citation, requiring Wycliffe to appear and answer to the charge of holding and publishing heretical opinions.

The nineteenth of the same month was fixed for his hearing, and the place, the cathedral of St. Paul's. On the day appointed, it was crowded to excess by the populace. Wycliffe appeared, accompanied by John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Lord Percy, the Earl Marshal.

It was with difficulty Wycliffe and his attendants made their way through the crowd. Courtney was not a little agitated on seeing the Reformer sustained by two so powerful personages. Quite a sharp dialogue is reported by Fuller to have taken place on the occasion, between Bishop Courtney, the Duke of Lancaster and Lord Percy; and the disturbance, consequently, became so great, that the convocation was dissolved, without either hearing Wycliffe or attending to any of its proper business.

It is well known that he appeared again, alone, before a Synod convened at Lambeth, in 1378.

In the plate, Courtney and the bishops are easily distinguishable on the right, in their robes of white; on the left, Wycliffe, with his white beard, book in one hand and cane in the other; in the centre, Lord Percy and John of Gaunt in sharp controversy with Courtney, pointing to Wycliffe, and claiming that he shall be seated, contrary to the demand of Courtney.

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From the Foreign Quarterly Review. STATE AND PROSPECTS OF MEXICO.

1. Versuch einer getreuen Schilderung der Republik Mejico. Von Eduard Muchlenpfordt, &c. (Essay of a Faithful Description of the Republic of Mexico. By Edward Muehlenpfordt, formerly Director of the Works of the Mexican Company, and afterwards Road-Surveyor to the State of Oajaca. 2 vols. Hanover. 1844. 2. Mexico as it was and as it is. By Brantz Mayer, Secretary of the United States' Legation to that Country, in 1841 and 1842. New-York and London. 1844. 3. Life in Mexico. By Madame Calderon de la Barca. London: Chapman & Hall. 1843.

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RECENT changes and revolutions are again attracting the attention of political observers to the shores of the Mexican Gulf. The late overthrow of Santa Anna, the decision of the question long pending between the Republic of Mexico and the United States of the north, as to the annexation of Texas, and the contingency of war or peace in regions which have so many claims on the attention of Europe, combine to revive no small portion of that keen interest 4. Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. By which, twenty years ago, was felt when the Mrs. Houston. 2 vols. London. 1844. fancied El Dorado was laid open to the en5. Mexico. By H. G. Ward, Esq., his Ma- terprise of Europe, and seem to show that jesty's Charge d'Affaires in that Coun- a new page of the many-leaved volume of try during the years 1825, 1826, and part of 1827. 2 vols. London. 1829. 6. Journal of a Residence and Tour in Mexico in the year 1826. By Captain G. F. Lyon, R. N., F. R. S. 7. Six Months' Residence and Travels in VOL. VI.-No. IV.

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the future is unfolding. The mighty current of human action sets in with increased volume and intensity towards the west and south of the American continent. At the present moment, therefore, we persuade ourselves that we shall render no unaccept

able service to our readers, by throwing to-ring and warlike race, the country would gether such information as we have been in fact afford the military key to both diviable to collect, on the present state and prospects of a country which, in spite of modern tourists, still remains in many respects a terra incognita to the mass of readers. This we shall preface by a succinct view of the leading events of Mexican history, from the outbreak of the revolution, interweaving such considerations of a more general kind as the subject may naturally suggest.

In thus restricting the range of our spec-
ulations, we are well aware of the sacrifice
we make, in foregoing themes which have
a perpetual and unfading charm for those
who love to linger on the storied memories
of the past.
A more tempting task might
be to recall our readers to the days of the
pilgrim of Palos, who explored the awful
mysteries of the ocean stream, till he found
'a temperate in a torrid zone :'

"The feverish air fann'd by a cooling breeze,
The fruitful vales set round with shady trees;
And guiltless men, who danced away their time,
Fresh as their groves, and happy as their clime."

Nor less pleasing would it be to make our
canvass gorgeous with the barbaric splen-
dors of the Indian monarchy and hierarchy,
to retrace the career of Cortes and his ad-
venturous cavaliers, and to tell

sions of the American continent; for, from her mountain-throne she overlooks the vast levels of Texas and the United States, while by way of Guatemala and across the Carribean Sea, the forces of a strong and compact state might dominate the feeble and divided communities of the South. She is seated on the great table-land formed by the Mexican Andes, which, springing from their southern roots in the Isthmus of Panama, stretch their vast system of ridges and valleys over the whole breadth of the country as far as to the mouth of Rio Bravo, and then receding to the west and north, traverse the length of the continent to where the towering peaks of the St. Elias glitter in their gorgeous icy robe, beneath the rays of the Arctic sun. The belt of coast which intervenes on each side between the mountains and the sea, forms a sure bulwark against foreign aggression, interposing by its tropical climate, and the diseases thence generated, to which the European falls a helpless prey, insurmountable obstacles to the passage of an army. Defended by resolute spirits and energetic hands, such a country would be impregnable, and even with the listless and indolent race by whom it is held, would be found no easy conquest to an invader; for though the opinion which is sometimes hazarded may be well-founded, that a modern Cortes might repeat the march from Vera Cruz to Mexico, he would find that on arriving at the capital, he was but on the threshold of his undertaking, even if his army had not long before melted away in the pestilential levels of the sea-coast. The Alpine conformation of its tropical region presents in its numberless terraces and valleys, elevated plains, and deep-sunk slades, that wondrous variety of climate and scenery which it has tasked the pens of all geographers and travellers to describe, with every shape of wildness, grandeur, and luxuriant beauty that can fill the fancy or charm the eye. Amid the mountain heights, from which spring the fire-born cones, with their stainless cinctures of perennial snow, we find the forests of Scandinavia reproduced; further down on their slopes, the delicious climate Mexico, from its advantages of situation, of Southern Europe, yielding in abundance its endless diversity of soil and climate, and the grain that nourishes the life of man, its capacity of sustaining an immense pop- and the rare and exquisite fruits that crown ulation, would seem to be a land destined its enjoyments the grape, the orange, the by nature to play no humble part in the af- olive, and the lemon; whilst at the base of fairs of the world. In the hands of a stir-the giant hills, the rich soil teems with the

"Of the glorious city won
Near the setting of the sun,
Throned in a silver lake;

Of seven kings in chains of gold."—

These are themes whose romantic interest awakens a never-failing response in the imagination at all times, and which with the youth of modern Europe rank second in fascination only to the fairy tales and national legends which are the time-consecrated food of juvenile fancy. But leaving such splendid scenes to Irving and Prescott, to whom they rightfully belong by the double tenure of indigenous association and prior occupancy, let us proceed to our own more sober, but, perhaps, more useful task of sketching the development of that society which, in the sixteenth century, was founded by the sword of Castile amidst the ruins of the Aztec Venice.

"Although the mountain-chain of Mexico

coffee-plant and the sugar-cane, and glows ed to present, some well-digested and able with the dazzling colors of the tropical observations on the subject by Mühlenpflora. The European race which occupied fordt :the empire of the Aztecs, was in fact conducted by the dispensations of Providence into a country which exhibits in many re-appears to be one and the same with that spects the natural counterpart of their own. the Andes, intersects all South America, from which, under the name of the Cordilleras of In the Spain of the New World, the same south to north; yet its structure on the north physical features which characterized their and south of the equator is entirely different. ancient dwelling-places, appear, though on On the southern hemisphere we see the Cora far wider and more magnificent scale. dilleras everywhere furrowed, lengthwise and The lofty sierras and table-lands, once for- crosswise, by valleys, which seem as if they est-clad though now treeless, of Castile, the have been formed by a forcible severance of net-work of ridges and stream-fed dales level at a great absolute elevation. The richly the mountains. Here we find tracts perfectly which interlaces the territory of Biscay, the cultivated plains around the town of Santa Fé fertile vegas and sterile wastes which bask de Bogota lies 8700, the high level of Coxaunder the suns of Andalusia and Granada, marca, in Peru, 9000, the wide plains about the all find their likenesses in that region of volcano of Antisana, 13,429 English feet above America which the first discoverers, struck the sea. These elevated flats of Cundinamarca, with the resemblance borne by its shores to Quito, and Peru, though quite level, have an extent of no more than forty-two square those they had left behind, greeted with the leagues; difficult of ascent, separated from appellation of New Spain. The parallel each other by deep valleys, surrounded by holds good, and will probably continue to lofty peaks, they have no connection with each do so, in the moral as well as the physical other, and offer but trifling facilities to internal features of the picture presented by modern communication in those countries. In Mexico, Mexico; for the populations of its various on the contrary, we find the main ridge of provinces show differences of character and mountains itself forming the table-land. Highmanners no less striking than are remarked uniform, lie near together, stretching from the raised plains, of far greater extent, and equally at the present day in those of Old Spain. 18th to the 40th parallel of latitude, in unThese are partly called forth by climate and broken succession, overtopped only by individsituation, but their most fertile source is no ual cones and lines of greater altitude. The doubt the greater or lesser proportion in direction of the table-land determines, as it which the intermixture of Indian with Eu- were, the whole course of the mountain-chains. The craters, of 16,000 to 18,000 feet high, are ropean blood has ensued. There results from the diversities of character to which ranged in lines, whose direction is not by any partly scattered on the table-land, partly arwe allude, and still more from the difficult- means always parallel with the general track ies of communication and the weakness of of the Cordilleras. In Peru, Quito, Cundinathe general government, an interprovincial marca, as observed, the lofty platforms are diisolation of the same kind with that which vided by cross valleys, whose perpendicular prevails so remarkably in the mother-coun-depth amounts sometimes to 4500 feet, and try, and exercises on its political changes by travellers on mules, on foot, or carried on whose steep precipices are only to be climbed and revolutions an influence still plainly the backs of Indians. In Mexico, on the other appreciable. hand, the table-lands are so continuous, that from Tehuantepec to Santa Fé, in New Mexico, nay, even into the territory of the United States, wheel-carriages might roll."

It will assist our readers in forming a more accurate idea of the physical conformation of the Mexican territory, and its infinite variety of climate, if we subjoin to the general view we have ourselves attempt

* Describing the voyage of discovery made by Grijalva along the Mexican coast, De Solis tells us: "Some one of the soldiers then saying that this land was similar to that of Spain, the comparison pleased the hearers so much, and remained so impressed on the memories of all, that no other original is to be found of the name of New Spain being given to those regions. Words spoken casually are repeated but by chance; save when propriety and grace of meaning are perceived in them, to captivate the memory of men." (Conquista de Mexico, l. i., c. 5.)

Ascending from Tehuantepec, on the Pacific coast, which is but 118 feet above the level of the sea, the table-land stretches from Oajaca to Durango, at an elevation of 6000 to 8000 feet,* its surface intersected by ridges which run from 9000 to 11,000 feet in height, while above this only isolated mountains ascend. Beyond Durango, in

* To this general statement, of course, excep tions may be pointed out. Thus the valley of Toluca, near Mexico, reaches an average eleva tion of 8500 feet.

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