stics_, p. 598.

[E] Dated December, 1796. Sparks's _Life and Letters_, Vol. XII. p. 328.

[F] A poetess whose merits, as it seems to me, are, as yet, only half
acknowledged.

[G] _Sense and Sensibility._

MEXICO.

Had the question been asked, forty years ago, what country, beside our
own, possesses the greatest natural advantages, and gives the best
promise of future growth and prosperity, very likely the answer would
have been, Mexico, which had then just thrown off the Spanish yoke and
achieved national independence. Cast aside for a moment all modern
ideas, derived from her known weakness and anarchy, and see how great
and manifold those apparent advantages and prospects were.

Situated where the continent of North America is narrowing from the
immense breadths of the United States and British America to that thread
of communication between continents, the Isthmus of Panama, on the one
side its shores are washed by the waters of the Gulf of Mexico for more
than sixteen hundred miles, and on the other by the tranquil Pacific for
four thousand more. Yet the distance from her great eastern port, Vera
Cruz, to the old Spanish treasure-depot, Acapulco, on the western coast,
was not, as the bird flies, more than three hundred miles: a distance
scarcely greater than that from Boston to New York, and which, with
modern means of transit, might be traversed between sunrise and sunset.
Thus with one hand she seemed ready to grasp the wealth of the Indies,
while with the other she welcomed all the products of European skill.
This wonderful geographical advantage had, indeed, been rendered futile
in the past by the jealous spirit and the exclusive enactments of her
oppressor. But what might not be hoped in the future from a free people,
quickened into fresh life by the breath of liberty?

Then the marvellous resources of every description which Nature had
crowded into her soil. Perhaps there is not on the whole earth another
strip of country, extending north and south only a thousand miles and
varying in width from one to five hundred miles, where side by side are
all climates and all their products. On the coasts the land is low, hot,
vaporous, and luxuriant,--the native home of the richest tropical
growths. Travel inland but a few leagues, and you rise to a greater
elevation, and find yourself beneath almost Italian skies and inhaling
Italian airs; while all around is a new vegetation,--the vine, the
olive, the