20 JUNE 1846, Page 16

GENERAL WADDY THOMPSON'S RECOLLECTIONS - OP MEXICO. GEXERAL Tuosresow was

sent to Mexico in 1842, as " Envoy Extraor- dinary and Minister Plenipotentiary," to effect the release of such citizens of the United States as bad joined that Texan overland expedition, for purposes of territorial robbery, of whose well-deserved failure and suffer- ings Mr. Kendall published an account. The General sailed from New Orleans, and reached Vera Cruz without incident ; thence he proceeded to Mexico by diligence, himself on the box, without further incident than daunting some robbers by the display of the arms of the corps diploma- lique. On his arrival at the capital, he effected his business in excellent style, as he gives us to understand ; and made a good arrangement in refer- ence to some claims on behalf of his Government, though the Senate dis- allowed one of his principal items : he also made a single excursion in the vicinity to examine Tezeuco and the pyramids in its neighbourhood. In this summary is comprised the story of his journey.

The substance of the book consists of the narrative, expanded by re-

flections and disquisitions. Sometimes these are spontaneous, and spring naturally from the circumstances,—such as remarks on the cultivation of the country, the laziness of the inhabitants, the manners of the various claws, and the superstitious forms of the Romish Church ; together with some sketches of public men, and some statistical accounts, useful if cor- rect. At other times they are less akin to the theme, though with an 'interest from their indications of American character ; involving specula- tions as to what Mexico would be made in the hands of the " free and enlightened "—discussions on fife interests or Great Britain to preserve• peace between Mexico and the States, lest the export of the precious me- : tals should be suspended—on the inferiority of the Mexican cavalry, and the incapacity of the Mexican army to wage war. Some of the others are remote, and rather dry ; with notices and extracts touching Cortes and the early state of Mexico. In fact, the book seems to have been got up with some view to the interest attached to Mexico, and to have been written currente calamo from memory. This mode of composition has its ad- vantages ; it prevents, as General Thompson remarks, excess of detail : but the subjects should have been observed with reference to future pub- lication, or the observer should have had a more vigorous and racy mind than this writer. General Thompson seems an excellent person, who really wishes to have a higher state of morality than his countrymen ; but the chains of "a tyrant majority", are too strong for him. He is ever halting between two opinions ; and though professing himself averse to the annexation of Texas and the seizure of California, he does not put his opinions upon any rule of right, but he thinks the United States terri- tory quite large enough.

This national peculiarity is indeed a distinctive feature of the book, and

almost the only one it possesses. In Europe, writers vary with their class. The lawyer-author is shrewd, sensible, and worldly, in his obser- vations, and clear if not close in his style : creteris paribus, the medical man is as sensible and penetrating, but not perhaps so tangible, and more professional in his choice of topics : the private gentleman has his distinc- tive traits in an agreeable but somewhat superficial observation, a less direct tone in his criticisms, and a nice discrimination where anything like personal charge or personal feelings are involved : the diplomatist or other public man has a larger view, a more business-like precision, and a still more guarded style, (with the exception of Lord Londonderry) : and so on through every other kind of writer, whether amateur or professional. The manner, or rather, as Walter Scott said, the no manners, of an American, are always of the same cast. Of course, individual qualities will have their play. The man of vigorous mind will write in a more vigorous style than the feebler-minded person ; the rattling go-ahead speculator will strike of a more rapid narrative than the sedate and elderly indivi- dual; a man with imagination will display a more florid manner than he who has none; and some traits of vocation will probably peep out, espe- cially in the divine. But there will throughout be a family likness. We recognize the "free and enlightened," who is less distinguished by hav- ing no superiors than by having everybody for an equal—except indeed the Blacks ; though General Thompson struggles hard for an exception as regards private service.

"The President has a very splendid baronche drawn by four American horses,

and I am ashamed to say driven by an American. I can never become reconciled to seeing a Native American performing the offices of a menial servant; but I felt this the more on seeing a foreigner and in a foreign land thus waited on by one of my countrymen. I was more than ever thankful that I lived in that portion of our country where no man is theoretically called a freeman who is not MO in fact, in feelings, and in sentiments; no decent Southern American could be induced to drive anybody's coach or clean his shoes. 1 have no doubt that if the

liberties of this country are ever destroyed that they will perish at the ballot-box; men whose menial occupations degrade them in their own self-esteem, and deprive them of the proud consciousness of equality, have no right to vote." ' From the general character of our author's reminiscences, coupled With the fact that all he saw, and a good deal more, has been described with greater freshness and vivacity by other writers, they do not furnish much matter for interesting quotation. We will rather address ourselves to the more political parts of the lucubration. Here, in surveying the in- side of the Cathedral at Mexico, is a feeling analogous to that which Blucher is said to have more tersely expressed when' taken to the top of St. Paul's.

" As you walk through the building, on either aide there are different apart- ments, all filled, from the floor-to the ceiling, with paintings, statues,.vases, huge candlesticks, waiters, and-a thousand other articles, made of gold or silver. This, too, is only the every-day display of articles of least value; the more costly are stored away in chests and closets. What must it be when all these are brought out, with the immense quantities of precious stones which the church is known to possess? And this is only one of the churches of the city of Mexico, where there are between sixty and eighty others,' and some of them possessing little less wealth than the cathedral; and it must also be remembered, that all the other large cities, such as Puebla, Guadalajara, Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Durango, Sim Louis, Potosi, have each a proportionate number of equally gorgeous establish- ments. It would-be the wildest and most random conjecture to attempt an esti- mate of the amount of the precious metals thus withdrawn from the useful pur- poses of the currency of the world, and wasted in these barbaric ornaments, as incompatible with good taste as they are with the humility which was the most striking feature in the character of the founder of our religion, whose chosen in- struments-were the lowly and humble, and who himself regarded as the highest evidence of his divine mission, the fact that to.the poor the Gospel was preaWied.' I do not'douht but there is enough of the precious metals in the different churches of Mexico to relieve sensibly the pressure upon the currency of the world, which has resulted from the diminished production of the mines and the increased quantity which has been appropriated to purposes of luxury??

We believe this estimate of the wealth of the Church in Mexico to be much exaggerated; but the fact does not alter the view, although in another place the General thinks no enemy would rob the Churches.

The following account of the Mexican cavalry and things in general is from a discussion about their military establishment and its discipline. The lasso, though doubtless absurd in such a battle as Waterloo, might not be altogether so ridiculous in an irregular contest on the prairies or swamps with small-bodies of inexperienced infantry. '

" I should regard it, (the cavalry,] from the diminutive size of their horses and feebleness equally diminutive stature and of their riders, as utterly inefficient against any common infantry. I said so in conversation with COlonel B---n, an officer who had seen some service arid. had some reputation. I was not a little amused at his reply. He admitted hut squares of infantry were .generally im- pregnable to cavalry, but said it was not so with the Mexican cavalry, that they had one resource by which they never hid any difficulty in breaking the square. was curious to know what this new and important discovery in the art of war was, and waited impatiently the ' push of his one thing,' when to my infinite amuse- ment. he replied—the lasso; that the ,Cavalry armed with lassos rode up and threw them over the men forming the squares, and pulled them out, and thus made the breach. I remembered that my old nurke had often got me to slee *hen st:child by yresaising to catch me some birds the feat day, by putt'

on their tiles, which I thought was about as easy an Opeiution as this new dhi- -coveq of the Mexican colonel. I had read'6f 'kneeling ranks and 'charging squadrons,' but this idea of lassoing squadrons was altogether new to me. Bona- parte fought and gained the battle of the Pyramids against the best cavalry in the world, the Mamalukes, entirely in squares. He lost the battle Of Waterloo because the British squares were impenetrable to the next best, the French ca- valry, during all of that long and awful conflict. The idea, however, of the lasso did not occur to the Mamelukes in Egypt, nor to Bonaparte at Waterloo. I was reminded of the equally novel attack of the Chinese upon the English, when they were all formed in battle array, and the Chinese threw somersets at them instead of cannon-balls and shells.

" The Mexican army, and more particularly their cavalry, may do very well to fight each other; but in any conflict with our Own or European troops, it would not be a battle but a massacre."