cruel _lepero_! had I ever got a sight of you along that weapon you handled so well--ah! I wellnigh wept for sorrow that night, and did not recover my spirits for a fortnight." The leperos, we need hardly explain, are the pest of Mexico--ragged, dirty, often disgusting with disease or deformity, born idlers, beggars, and thieves--in the latter capacity so especially skilful, that Mr Wise inclines to the belief that a man, standing open-mouthed in a crowd of them, could hardly escape having the gold picked from his molars. They reaped a rich harvest at the time of the American invasion. It was a case of "_nos amis les ennemis_." The conquerors were preyed upon by the conquered. Iron bars were unavailing against the cunning rogues. "One evening some expert practitioner contrived to entice a valuable pair of pistols, clothing, and other articles, from my table in the centre of a large apartment, by introducing a pole and hook through the iron _grille_ of the window; and the same night, my friend Molinero was robbed of his bed-clothes, while sleeping, by the same enterprising method." By a strange tolerance, these leperos are admitted everywhere; and in the splendid coffee and gambling houses of the large cities, they are found rubbing their filthy rags against officers' embroideries and the fine broadcloth of wealthy burgesses. At Guanaxato, Mr Wise gives a lively description of a scene of this kind in the handsome saloons of the _Gran Sociedad_, recalling to our memory, though at a long interval, some striking pages of the first volume of Sealsfield's gorgeous Mexican romance, _Der Virey and die Aristocraten_. The lepero's chief pastimes are thieving, sleeping, and gambling for copper coins. By way of variety, he occasionally gets up a mortal combat. We think the following the best account of a knife-duel we ever read:--