[F] A poetess whose merits, as it seems to me, are, as yet, only half acknowledged. [G] _Sense and Sensibility._ MEXICO. Had the question been asked, forty years ago, what country, beside our own, possesses the greatest natural advantages, and gives the best promise of future growth and prosperity, very likely the answer would have been, Mexico, which had then just thrown off the Spanish yoke and achieved national independence. Cast aside for a moment all modern ideas, derived from her known weakness and anarchy, and see how great and manifold those apparent advantages and prospects were. Situated where the continent of North America is narrowing from the immense breadths of the United States and British America to that thread of communication between continents, the Isthmus of Panama, on the one side its shores are washed by the waters of the Gulf of Mexico for more than sixteen hundred miles, and on the other by the tranquil Pacific for four thousand more. Yet the distance from her great eastern port, Vera Cruz, to the old Spanish treasure-depot, Acapulco, on the western coast, was not, as the bird flies, more than three hundred miles: a distance scarcely greater than that from Boston to New York, and which, with modern means of transit, might be traversed between sunrise and sunset. Thus with one hand she seemed ready to grasp the wealth of the Indies, while with the other she welcomed all the products of European skill. This wonderful geographical advantage had, indeed, been rendered futile in the past by the jealous spirit and the exclusive enactments of her oppressor. But what might not be hoped in the future from a free people, quickened into fresh life by the breath of liberty?