The strange mixture of idealism and cruelty which is found in the outstanding figures of Spanish American revolutionary history is, we may here reflect, remarkable. We find men who have lived the dreadful lives of guerilla chiefs, with their hands not merely stained with blood, but their honour besmirched with the most horrible deeds--deeds of torture, of treason, of massacre, of rape, of robbery--sometimes enunciating the most philosophical and beautiful sentiments or enduring aphorisms. The dividing line between bloodshed and cruelty and philosophy is, in Spanish America, a very narrow one, and the Spanish American may be called upon to cross it perhaps between breakfast and lunch. We find such figures and situations in every one of the twenty States of Iberian America, from Mexico to Uruguay. A national hero of Uruguay was Artigas, an ex-smuggler who rose to be Dictator over a vast territory; who rose with dramatic rapidity in the turbulent times of the War of Independence and the civil struggles that followed. It is not here suggested that Artigas was of the character described in the former paragraph, although some historians have painted him in the darkest colours, but opportunity is taken to show the varied sides of such characters, in their enunciations of lofty sentiments. When, in 1815, Artigas was endowed by the Montevideo Government with the title of "Captain-General, Protector and Patron of the Liberty of the Nation," he replied: "Titles are the phantoms of States. Let us teach our countrymen to be virtuous. It is thus I have retained the title of a simple citizen." Now comes the flash of philosophy. "The day will come," said this guerilla chief, "when men will act from a sense of duty, and when they will devote their best interests to the honour of their fellow men." Here is a further page from the early history of Independence on the River Plate: "Artigas was now encamped for the first time with a translated nation and an independent army of his own. The condition of both was grimly tragic, pathetically humorous. For fourteen months almost the only shelter, that served for all alike, was afforded by the branches of the trees and the boards of the carts that had brought them. As for the army, it was composed of strangely heterogeneous elements. Honest countryfolk rubbed shoulders with professional criminals and cut-throats; Indians from the destroyed Jesuit missions went side by side with fierce-faced Gauchos; while townsmen, negroes and a few adventurous foreigners made up the mixed gathering.