Less than fifty years cover the time between the appearance of Hidalgo and that of Miramon; and between the dates of the leaderships of the two men, Mexico has had an army of generals, of whom little is now known beyond their names. Hidalgo, Morelos, Mina, Bravo, Iturbide, Guerrero, Bustamente, Victoria, Pedraza, Gomez Farias, Paredes, and Herrera,--such are the names that were once familiar to our countrymen in connection with Mexican affairs. We have now a new race of Mexican chiefs,--Alvarez, Comonfort, Zuloaga, Uraga, Juarez, Vidaurri, Haro y Tamariz, Degollado, and Miramon. Some of these last-named chiefs might, perhaps, be classed with those first named, from years and services; but whatever of political importance they have belongs to the present time; and the most important man of them all, Miramon, is said to be very young, and was not born until many years after the last vestiges of the vice-regal rule had been removed. Santa Ana, but for his shifting round so often,--now an absolute ruler, and then an absolute runaway, yet ever contriving to get the better of his antagonists, whether they happen to be clever Mexicans or dull Americans,--might be called the isthmus that connects the first generation of leaders with that which now misleads his country. Santa Ana's public life synchronizes with the independence of Mexico of foreign rule, and his career can hardly be pronounced at an end. It would be of the nature of a newspaper coincidence, were he to know his "last of earth" at the very time when, by all indications, Mexico stands in greater danger of losing her national life than she has known since the day when Barradas was sent to play the part of Cortes, but proved himself not quite equal to that of Narvaez. Santa Ana owed much of his power to his victory over the Spaniards in 1830, though pestilence did half the work to his hand; and perhaps no better evidence of the hatred of the Mexicans for Spanish rule can be adduced, than the hold which he has maintained over their minds, in consequence of the part he took in overthrowing that rule, and in rendering its return impossible.