The latest works of Cervantes, were the genuine continuation and completion of Don Quixote, the Journey to Parnassus, which was first published in 1614, and finally the romance of Persiles and Sigismunda, for which, a few days previous to his death, he wrote a dedication to the Count of Lemos. From various passages in the prefaces and introductions to these last works, it is obvious how highly Cervantes prized that celebrity which, after many abortive efforts, he had at length obtained in his old age. But even where his vanity is not disguised, it is easy, from the candid tone in which he speaks of himself, to recognize the man of firm and upright spirit, the declared enemy of every sort of affectation, and the honest and liberal judge of himself and others. He died in poverty, though not in extreme want, at Madrid, in 1616, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. He was buried privately, without any kind of distinction, and not even a common tomb-stone marks the spot where the ashes of Cervantes repose. Were we to arrange the works of Cervantes according to their merits, the first place must be assigned to Don Quixote, which is moreover entitled to the supremacy, inasmuch as it is single in its kind. To enter into a description of the contents of this universally known master-piece, or to give a circumstantial analysis of its plan, would be equally superfluous. A few words, however, on the happy and original idea which forms the foundation of the whole work may here be introduced. It has often been said, though the opinion has, perhaps, not been fully weighed, nor even expressed with sufficient precision, that the venerable knight of La Mancha is the immortal representative of all men of exalted imagination, who carry the noblest enthusiasm to a pitch of folly; because with understandings in other respects sound, they are unable to resist the fascinating power of a self-deception, by which they are induced to regard themselves as beings of a superior order. None but an experienced observer of mankind, endowed with profound judgment, and a genius to the penetrating glance of which one of the most interesting recesses of the human heart had been newly disclosed, could have seized the idea of such a romance with energetic decision. None but a poet and a man of wit could have thrown so much poetic interest into the execution of that idea; and none but an author who had at his disposal all the richness and variety of one of the finest languages in the world, could have diffused over such a work that classical perfection of expression, which gives the stamp of excellence to the whole. The originality of the idea of Don Quixote is not only historically demonstrated, by no romance of a similar kind having previously existed--for pictures of ingenious roguery in the style of Lazarillo de Tormes, belong to a totally different species of comic romance--but it is also physiologically certain, that a creative