Other American conservatives were Lucas Alaman, leader of the Mexican conservatives and author of a fine history of his country; Bartolome Herrera, a follower of Guizot, in Peru; Cecilio Acosta, in Venezuela: these were in agreement with Alberdi upon certain points of his ample doctrine. Like the Argentine, Acosta wished to see more elementary and secondary schools and fewer universities, to find "practical knowledge replacing a parchment scholarship; free speech and thought the fetters of the peripatetic school; and generalisation, casuistry." The jurists obeyed the same tendency; they were {248} positive and analytic spirits; they brought clarity and discipline to an incoherent politics. Among them we may cite, after Bello, Calvo, Garcia Calderon, Velez Sarsfield, and Ambrosio Montt. They opposed the ineffectual Constitutions of the precisians. Liberal idealism vanquished conservative good sense. Lastarria attracted impetuous youth more than Bello and Alberdi; Guizot had few readers; Lamartine and Benjamin-Constant were popular. Liberalism, radicalism, Jacobinism: these were the various disguises of South American anarchy. [1] Za piola, _La Sociedad de la Igualdad_, Santiago, 1902, p. 8. {249} CHAPTER II THE LITERATURE OF THE YOUNG DEMOCRACIES Spanish classicism and French romanticism--Their influence in America--Modernism--The work of Ruben Dario--The novel--The _conte_ or short story The ancient Spanish colonies, freed from the political authority of Spain, still followed her in the matter of literature; republican autonomy and intellectual subjection were not incompatible. Towards 1825 writers in prose and verse were by no means imitating France, although she gave them her declamatory politics and her revolutionary code. Educated in Spain, the best minds were seeking their inspiration in the Spanish literature of the eighteenth century: the works of the classic Quintana, of Moratin, Gallego, Lista, and Jovellanos dominated the American schools.