Many of the intellectual leaders of Peru were nurtured under the strenuous regimen which the unsettled conditions of the first thirty years of republican rule made necessary, their genius shining out with brilliancy during the period of peace and prosperity that followed. It was not unusual to find a general of the army, whose war record was the pride of his country, devoting himself to literary work later, when quiet reigned. One of the most celebrated historians of Peru, Don Manuel Mendiburu, whose monumental work, _Diccionario Biográfico del Peru_ has made his name immortal, fought in the patriot ranks during the war of independence, was made Minister of War by President Gamarra, became a general of the army, and was president of the commission that reformed the military laws, as they exist to-day. He was a statesman as well as a soldier, and presided over the assembly which, in 1860, promulgated the present constitution of Peru. As Minister of War, Minister of Finance, and Diplomatic Minister to England, he served his country with honor and distinction, being one of the most illustrious men of his day, in war and peace. It was only in the intervals of his public career that Dr. Mendiburu found time to pursue his biographical studies, the results of which are most important to Peruvian literature. For, though this great work is called a dictionary, its sixteen volumes are so complete in historical information as to be entitled to rank among the best records of the colonial period of Peru. Of the eighty years that covered the lifetime of this great man, from 1805 to 1885, more than three score were spent in public service. He led the vanguard in the last war, was War Minister in 1880, and at the time of his death was president of a commission charged with the reorganization of the National Archives. It is not often that human activity extends over so many years, and one is accustomed to think that in Latin countries, and especially in the tropics, the spirit of youth is of short duration, the precocious child arriving early at the zenith of his possibilities, and declining at an age when the slower native of a less favored zone is in his prime. There are remarkable exceptions to this rule in Peru, where the years have passed lightly over many a _viejo verde_, as the “green old age” is called. Don Francisco de Paula Vigil, the liberal philosopher of Tacna, prominent for half a century in politics and literature and director of the National Library for forty years, died in 1875 at eighty-three years of age. Luciano Cisneros, an eminent orator, jurist, and writer on constitutional law, was a member of the Academy of Jurisprudence in Madrid, a judge of the Superior Court, Minister of State, Diplomatic Representative of his government in Europe, and held his own among the leading statesmen of Peru until his death in 1906, at seventy-four years of age. Francisco Garcia Calderon, a member of the Spanish Academy and a