ails by
degrees--from Spain concerning that affair, in the beginning of the new
year 1832.

Torrijos, as we have seen, had hitherto accomplished as good as nothing,
except disappointment to his impatient followers, and sorrow and regret
to himself. Poor Torrijos, on arriving at Gibraltar with his wild band,
and coming into contact with the rough fact, had found painfully how
much his imagination had deceived him. The fact lay round him haggard
and iron-bound; flatly refusing to be handled according to his scheme
of it. No Spanish soldiery nor citizenry showed the least disposition to
join him; on the contrary the official Spaniards of that coast seemed
to have the watchfulest eye on all his movements, nay it was conjectured
they had spies in Gibraltar who gathered his very intentions and
betrayed them. This small project of attack, and then that other,
proved futile, or was abandoned before the attempt. Torrijos had to lie
painfully within the lines of Gibraltar,--his poor followers reduced to
extremity of impatience and distress; the British Governor too, though
not unfriendly to him, obliged to frown. As for the young Cantabs, they,
as was said, had wandered a little over the South border of romantic
Spain; had perhaps seen Seville, Cadiz, with picturesque views, since
not with belligerent ones; and their money being done, had now returned
home. So had it lasted for eighteen months.

The French Three Days breaking out had armed the Guerrillero Mina, armed
all manner of democratic guerrieros and guerrilleros; and considerable
clouds of Invasion, from Spanish exiles, hung minatory over the North
and North-East of Spain, supported by the new-born French Democracy,
so far as privately possible. These Torrijos had to look upon with
inexpressible feelings, and take no hand in supporting from the South;
these also he had to see brushed away, successively abolished by
official generalship; and to sit within his lines, in the painfulest
manner, unable to do anything. The fated, gallant-minded, but too
headlong man. At length the British Governor himself was obliged, in
official decency and as is thought on repeated remonstrance from his
Spanish official neighbors, to signify how indecorous, improper
and impossible it was to harbor within one's lines such explosive
preparations, once they were discovered, against allies in full peace
with us,--the necessity, in fact, there was for the matter ending. It
is said, he offered Tor