Does it only prove that rats, as well as men, may be ungrateful? Or is it a little illustration of the wise and merciful arrangement, that the world must go on, die who will? [From Colburn's United Service Magazine.] GENERAL ROSAS, AND THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. In the provinces of the Argentine confederation, as well as throughout the whole of South America, the population is divided into two distinct families; the city and the country. The inhabitants of the cities--issues of the Spanish colonization--are, as it were, intimately blended with the foreign element, which they seem to represent; the inhabitants of the country, on the other hand, constitute the indigenous element, with all the customs of primitive life. Until the accession to power of General Rosas, who from the first had especially applied himself to the task of incorporating these two distinct races under one general head, by taming down the half savage nature of the country party, this strongly marked separation between the two castes, had been the principal cause of the numerous revolutions which had hitherto distracted and laid waste the country. This fusion, it must be allowed, was a difficult task to perform: and though not yet perfectly accomplished, it is, nevertheless, easily recognizable in the province of Buenos Ayres; above all, in that portion of it which lies round the capital. The inhabitant of the country, who is styled a Gaucho, is, as it were, an isolated being on the face of creation; for in vain do we seek his counterpart either in the deserts of Asia, or in the sands of Africa. The provinces of the Argentine Confederation may almost be termed deserts; since, over the entire face of a territory equal in extent to the whole of France, is scattered a population numbering but 800,000 souls. In these vast and almost deserted plains, there are no cities to be found, but merely _estancias_--a species of solitary farms planted amid immense solitudes. Alone, among his peons (or daily laborers) Gauchos like himself, the _estancier_ lives as absolute master, without desires, without industry, without agricultural labor. His sole occupation consists in branding, and, when the proper time shall come, in slaughtering the cattle, which form his entire wealth. The Gaucho exists on meat and water only; the use of bread, vegetables, fruits, or spirituous liquors being unknown to him. As for his outward apparel, he rudely manufactures it out of the hides of oxen, or the fleeces of the sheep; a few sticks, and three or four ox hides, suffice for the construction of his tent, when he sojourns for any length of time in one spot; for ordinarily, he sleeps in the open air, enveloped in his poncho. His simple, but formidable arms, are reduced to the _lasso_, and the _bolas_, and to a large knife, which he wears stuck into his waist-belt. The Gaucho remains for weeks and months entire, without perceiving the face of a human being; passing his time in wandering amid