On the twenty-seventh day of December 1806, at the collegiate town of Tortosa in Catalonia, Maria Griño, the wife of José Cabrera, an industrious and respectable mariner, gave birth to a son. Destined to the church, this child, from his earliest boyhood, was the petted favourite of his family. His parents looked to him as a staff and support for their declining years, his sisters as a protector; and none ventured to thwart his whims, or correct the failings of the young student. Thus abandoned to the dictates of a disposition naturally perverse, Ramon Cabrera led the life of a vagabond, rather than that of a scholar and of one destined to holy orders. Avoided by the more respectable of his classmates and townsmen, he fell amongst evil associates, and soon became notorious for precocity of vice. The reprimands of his superiors, the entreaties of his relatives, even punishment and seclusion, were inefficacious to reclaim him. Disliking books, the sole use he made of opportunities of study, was to imbibe the abominable and sanguinary maxims of the Inquisition. The taint of Carlism, widely spread amongst the clergy of the diocese of Tortosa, whose bishop, Saenz, was an influential and devoted member of the apostolical party, was speedily contracted by Cabrera. By character and propensities better fitted for an unscrupulous military partisan thau for a minister of the gospel, for a devouring wolf than for a meek and humble shepherd of God's flock, no sooner was the cry of insurrection raised in the kingdom of Arragon than he hastened to swell it with his voice. On the 15th of November 1833 he joined Colonel Carnicer, who had already planted on the ramparts of Morella the standard of Charles the Fifth.

Six years have elapsed since the termination of the civil war in Arragon and Valencia, and we should

scarcely hope to interest English readers by raking up its details. In taking the volumes named at foot for the subject of an article, our intention is rather to give a correct notion of the character of a man who by one party has been extolled as a hero, by another stigmatized as a savage. A brief sketch of his career, and a few personal anecdotes, will afford the best means of deciding which of these epithets he may with most justice claim.

For the first sixteen months of the war, Cabrera acted as subordinate to Carnicer, chief of the Arragonese Carlists; and during that time he in no way distinguished himself, save by occasional acts of cruelty. His presumption and want of military knowledge caused the loss of more than one action-especially that of Mayals in Catalonia, in which, as it was then thought, the Arragonese faction received its death-blow. This unlucky encounter was followed by various lesser ones, equally disastrous; and at the commencement of 1835, the Carlist chiefs in the eastern provinces of the Peninsula were reduced to wander in the mountains at the head of scanty and disheartened bands, seeking shelter from the Queen's troops, against whom they were totally unable to make a stand. Furious at this state of things, and still more so at the conduct of Carnicer, to whose lenity with the prisoners and population he attributed their reverses, discontented also with his obscure and subaltern position, Cabrera, who represented in Arragon the apostolical or ultra-absolutist party, and who on that account had influential supporters at the court of Charles the Fifth, resolved upon a bold attempt to get rid of his chief and command in his stead. Abandoning his post, he set out for Navarre, in company with a clever and resolute female of considerable personal attractions, intended as a propitiatory offering to the royal

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widower whose favour he was about to solicit. On his arrival he obtained a private audience of Don Carlos, to whom he represented himself as capable of commanding in Arragon, and of achieving the triumph of the King's cause. He exposed his plan of campaign, accused Carnicer of weakness and mistaken humanity, and urged the necessity of severe and sanguinary measures. The result of his representations, and of the pleadings of his friends, some of whom were the Pretender's most esteemed counsellors, was his return to Arragon, bearing a despatch by which Carnicer was ordered to make over his command to Cabrera, and to present himself at headquarters in Navarre. On the ninth of March 1835, Cabrera assumed the supreme command, and Carnicer, in obedience to his instructions, set out for the Basque country. On his road he fell into the hands of the Christinos, and was shot at Miranda del Ebro.

Public opinion amongst the Carlists unhesitatingly attributed to Cabrera the death of his former superior. Under pretence of their serving him as guides, he had prevailed upon Carnicer to take with him two officers whom he pointed out. These were also made prisoners; but although the Eliot convention was not yet in existence, and quarter was rarely given, both of them were exchanged after a very short delay. The information received by the Christino authorities, of the route that Carnicer was to follow, was sent from the village of Palomar on a day when Cabrera was quartered there. Other circumstances confirmed the suspicion of foul play, and that Carnicer had been betrayed by his own party; and so generally was the treachery imputed to Cabrera, that he at last took notice of the charge, and used every means to check its discussion. So long as a year afterwards, he shot at Camarillas the brother of one of the two officers who had accompanied Carnicer, for having

been so imprudent as to say that the latter had been sold by Cabrera.* Such severity produced, of course, a directly opposite effect to that desired by its author; for although Cabrera pretexted other motives, its real ones were evident, and all men remained convinced of his guilt. Subsequently, the Carlist general Cabañero threw the alleged calumny in his face in presence of several persons, and instead of repelling it with his sword, Cabrera submitted patiently to the imputation.

Justly distrustful of those about him, Carnicer, when passing the night in the mountains, was wont to change his sleeping place after all his companions had retired to rest. On one occasion, in the neighbourhood of Alacon, a soldier who had lain down upon the couch prepared for his general, was assassinated by a pistol-shot. Cabrera was in the encampment, and although the perpetrator of the deed was never positively known, rumour laid the crime at his door. Whether or not the dark suspicion was well founded, the establishment of its justice would scarcely add a shade of blackness to the character of Ramon Cabrera.

Already, during a period of eighteen months, the kingdoms of Arragon and Valencia had groaned beneath the calamities of civil war. Their cattle driven, their granaries plundered, their sons dragged away to become unwilling defenders of Don Carlos, the unfortunate inhabitants could scarcely conceive a worse state than that of continual alarm and insecurity in which they lived. They had yet to learn that what they had hitherto endured was light to bear, compared to the atrocious system introduced by the ruthless successor of Carnicer. From the day that Cabrera assumed the command, the war became a butchery, and its inflictions ceased to be confined to the armed combatants on either side. Thenceforward, the infant in the cradle, the bedridden old

man, the pregnant matron, were included amongst its victims. A mere suspicion of liberal opinions, the possession of a national guardsman's uniform, a glass of water given to a wounded Christino, a distant relationship to a partisan of the Queen, was sentence of death. The rules of civilized warfare were set at nought, and Cabrera, in obedience to his sanguinary instincts, committed his murders not only when they might possibly advance, but even when they must positively injure, the cause of him whom he styled his sovereign. "Those days that I do not shed blood," said he, in July 1837, when waiting in the ante-chamber of Don Carlos with Villareal, Merino, Cuevillas, and other generals, "I have not a good digestion." During the five years of his command, his digestion can rarely have been troubled.

The task of recording the exploits and cruelties of Cabrera, and the history of the war in which he took so prominent a part, has been undertaken by three Spaniards of respectability and talent; the principal of whom, Don Francisco Cabello, was formerly political chief of the province of Teruel, in the immediate vicinity of Cabrera's strongholds. There he had abundant opportunities of gathering information concerning the Carlist leader. In the book before us he does not confine himself to bare assertion, but supplies an ample appendix of justificatory documents, without which, indeed, many of the atrocious facts related would find few believers.

The Carlist troops in Arragon and Valencia were of very different composition from those in Navarre and Biseay. In the latter provinces, an intelligent and industrious peasantry rose to defend certain local rights and immunities, whose preservation, they were taught to believe, was bound up with the success of Don Carlos. In Eastern Spain the mass of the respectable and labouring classes were of liberal opinions, and the ranks of the faction were swelled by the dregs and refuse of the population. Highwaymen and smugglers, escaped criminals, profligate monks, bad characters of every description, banded together under command of chiefs little better than themselves, but who, by greater

energy, or from having a smattering of military knowledge, gained an ascendancy over their fellows. In these motley hordes of reprobates, who, after a time, schooled by experience and defeat, were formed into regular battalions, capable of contending, with chances of success, against equal numbers of the Queen's troops, the clergy played a conspicuous part. Rare were the encounters between Christinos and Carlists, in which some sturdy friar did not lose his life whilst heading and encouraging the latter; after every action cowls and breviaries formed part of the spoil; scarce one of the rebel leaders but had his clerical staff of chaplains, sharing in, often stimulating, his cruelties and excesses. Those monks who did not openly take the field, busied themselves in promoting disaffection amongst the Queen's partisans. The most subversive sermons were daily preached; the confessional became the vehicle of insidious and treasonable admonitions; the liberal section of the clergy was subjected to cruel molestation and injustice. All these circumstances, added to the seandal and discord that reigned in the convents, loudly called for the suppression of the latter. Not only the government, which saw and suffered from the rebellion so enthusiastically shared in and promoted by the monks, but the very founders of the orders, could they have revisited Spain, would have advised their abolition. The following curious extract from the book now under review gives a striking picture of Spanish monastic doings in the nineteenth century.

"If, in the year 1835, St Bernard could have accompanied us on our visit to the monastery of Beruela in the Moncayo, surely he would have been indignant, and would have chastised the monks; surely he himself would have solicited the extinction of his order. Out of thirty monks, very few confessed, and only two or three knew how to preach; every one breakfasted and said mass just when he thought proper; by nine in the morning they might be seen wandering about the neighbouring country and gardens, or shooting small birds near the gates of the monastery; at eleven, they assembled in a cell to play monté with