Garcia Mérou, besides being a poet, is an elegant essayist--already noticed--a good historian, and has shown himself highly appreciative of the work of brother poets. It is, perhaps, to the amateurish state of Argentine literature, which does not engender professional jealousy, that the pleasant comradeship and apparent lack of literary squabbles are due. Garcia Mérou published many volumes of poems of the usual type in the eighties. In 1891 appeared a different kind of work, "Cuadros Epicos," short poems dealing with various scenes in Spanish-American history. "El Mar de Balboa" is impressive. The things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme are still the best part of Argentine literature; in new countries material fruit precedes intellectual blossom. This is inevitable in such cases, for it is necessary to live before it is possible to write, and literature is at every disadvantage owing to the scantiness and preoccupation of the people. Prosperity may probably continue to blunt the literary sense, for national dangers and terrors, such as called forth the Elizabethan literature and the Romantic Revival in England, or the modest "Lira Argentina," are unlikely, and the education system, which despises Latin and Greek--_i.e._, literature--does not foster good writers. The matter must be left to time and events. The people of Argentina are practical, and their literary wants are well supplied in the shape of all that the practical man wants. There are excellent and useful writings on law, adequate histories, lucid essays, a few novels, and, above all, a most excellent press, which last probably forms his complete substitute for a library. He wants no more. Possibly that absence of wants is the most serious want of all; a life that can be satisfied by craftsman, cook, or groom, is at least incomplete, and it may be that earth has something better to show than fat cattle, corn, grapes, or even dollars. These things have not been the distinguishing products of nations in the past which are now inscribed upon the rolls of fame, and, however materialistic men become, such things will not even now hand a nation on to all futurity. The literature of Argentina, though creditable, is by no means on a scale proportionate to her present position among nations. FOOTNOTES: [82] See Windsor, "History of America," ii. 322, 3. [83] "The obligations of religion were undermined, every weapon was directed to the extermination of the unshaken foes of the revolution. The ignorant and depraved set no bounds to their conduct, every thought of religion and morals, of future welfare and its effects upon unborn generations, were out of the question. Many of the youth of this province have, in consequence, been brought up in a neglect of all religion" (Captain Andrews, "Journey" &c., i. 190). [84] Primary education is free and compulsory for children between the ages of six and fourteen. It is also, unfortunately, secular.