n its attempt to
interfere, but a bill to that effect was voted down by the adherents of the
President.

[Sidenote: Distress in Spain]

In Mexico, Bustamente had again become President. In the neighboring State
of Colombia, President Marquez, likewise, had himself re-elected. The
influence of North American progress was shown in Cuba by the opening of
the first railway there, long before the mother country, Spain, could boast
of such an advance in civilization. There the civil war was still draining
the resources of the country. On May 17, General Evans took Trun, but
failed to follow up his success. In Portugal, the restoration of Pedro's
Charta de Ley was proclaimed by the Duke of Terceira.

[Sidenote: Fall of Guizot]

[Sidenote: Death of Fourier]

In France, an unfortunate attempt to fix large dowries on the Duc de
Nemours and the Queen of the Belgians raised an outcry against the private
avarice of the King. As the result of the Ministerial crisis that followed
the defeat of these measures in the Chambers Guizot had to retire from the
Ministry. Mole remained in charge with the reconstituted Cabinet. The
success of a second expedition against Constantine, in which the Duc de
Nemours gained distinction, invested Mole's new Ministry with a certain
popularity. Measures for a general political amnesty and for the closing of
gambling houses were readily voted by the Chambers. The people of Paris
were kept amused first by the marriage of the Duc d'Orleans to Princess
Helene of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and by the subsequent wedding of Princess
Marie d'Orleans, the amateur sculptress, to Duke Alexander of Wurtemberg, a
dilettante, like herself, in letters. The occasion provoked the German poet
Heine, then lying ill at Paris, to some of his most pungent witticisms.
Ailing though he was, Heine was made a member of the new "Societe des Gens
de Lettres," founded by Balzac, Lamennais, Dumas and Georges Sand. Further
events in French letters were the publication of Eugene Sue's
"Latreaumont," and the appearance of the early part of Michelet's "History
of France." Francois Charles Marie Fourier, the philosophic writer and
follower of St. Simon, died in his sixty-fifth year. Before his death his
well-elaborated system of communism, as put forward in his "Traite de
l'Association Domestique et Agricole," had found general acceptance among
the radical orders of France.

[Sidenote: Death of Leopardi]

[Sidenote: Ode to Brutus Minor