The subsequent Sketch was prepared, at a short notice, at the request of Messrs. Russell, Cutler and Belcher, as prefa. tory to their account of the dinner, in 1809, given by the mer. chants of Boston, in honour of the "Spanish Patriots." Mr. Paine was now greatly depressed in his circumstances, and his health was so much impaired, that he was confined almost wholly to his house. He was not the owner nor possessor of a single historical tract; and, living out of town, he had not the means of consulting any, while writing, if it had been necessary to his purpose. The store-house of his memory alone supplied him with the materials. It would be difficult to find a greater volume of history compressed into a narrower compass; and, judging from his conversation, it could not have been reasonably inferred that the history of this section of the globe had been the subject of his particular attention. A mind, so capable of looking "into the seeds of time," and so abundantly replenished with the lore of past ages, ought to have been encouraged and might have been usefully employed in elevated political speculations.

The heroick valour of Spain and her illustrious ally has "plucked up her drowned honour by the locks ;" and four years have given the substantial impress of truth to these sanguine speculations. Prophecy surrendered to history upon the renowned plains of Salamanca.

SKETCH OF SPAIN.

"The STORK in the heavens knoweth her appointed time!"

At this momentous crisis in the annals of human liberty, when the hopes and fears of mankind are trembling in the balance with dark and doubtful destiny, Spain, a nation peculiarly marked by heaven and history; great though oppressed, never despairing, and now resuscitated, has become equally interesting to the mind of the philosopher, and the heart of the philanthropist. The late eruption of publick virtue in this southern extremity of Atlantick Europe, while it has covered with a warm suffusion of transport the cheeks of all brother patriots in every section of the globe, is not to be regarded as one. of the wonders of this "age of prodigies!" After an elaborate and unbiassed examination and comparison of the national genealogy, and family features, of modern Europe, we feel an ingenuous pride in asserting, that this revolution, bold and glorious as it is, is no miracle at the south of the Pyrennecs. There it is a plain event, which was justly to be expected, from the fire and the patience, the constancy and the elevation of the Spanish character. Slow to determine, the Spaniards. are resolute to act. True to their plight, muscular from labour,

and familiar with peril, they glory in their zeal, contented to suffer, and despising to despair. Such men may be slaught ered, but they can never be disgraced or conquered.

Cordially as the great family of man has rejoiced at the late uprising of this powerful though recumbent people, we have no doubt but the aspiring dictator of Europe still beholds this sudden disruption of his jesuitical plans, as the most surprising incident in the political drama, of whose tragical buffoonery, he had so long been the principal actor; a drama, in which he played "the very vice of kings," and oft had made some scores of brother kings, and sister, brother kings of "threads and patches;" and all, perdue, to put their "precious diadems in his pocket!" It is now useless to add, that this Imperial freebooter was born in the island of Corsica, in the very year, when it became a patch on the train of the French colonies; an island which has produced but one Paoli, and above a million pirates; an island, which in 1768, became a fief of France, and in thirty years after gave a tyrant to her mistress. This emigrant Emperour had brought with him, from the mountainous crag of his nativity, the unprincipled atrocity and barbarism of its predatory inhabitants, attempered and commanded by the prodigal boldness of its once noble chief. It is no blot on the escutcheon of Paoli, that he attended as a Christian sponsor, at the baptism (Oh word prophaned!) of Buonaparte! for then, he knew not the mishapen babe of blood; and who shall look "into the seeds of time?" Now, indeed, (should this great spirit now revisit earth,) he would blush at the degeneracy of his godson,

And startle at the dire pollution of the rite,
Which at the sacred fount baptized a fiend!
And, in the conscious horrour of the tomb,

His peace-laid bones would shiver at the deed

In the invasion of Spain, the predictions of that firm and enlightened patriot Cevallos have been verified to the amazement of the usurper, who presumptuously thought that she had forgotten her Pelagias and her Charles, as Holland had her Van Trump and her Nassau. It is evident that he misrated the people, with whom he had to contend. He had not suspected, that the very arts, which he employed to sever the rock at the basis of the mountain, would rend the ice on its summit, and produce an avalanche to crush him. Infatuated with triumph, and unsated with spoil; a hero compounded of marginal notes translated from Plutarch; a politician, military as Rome, and corrupt as her Prætorian cohort; he adventured on the conquest of this degraded, though not degenerated people, without knowing one spring in the whole physical engine, that moved the energy and the spirit of the country. It is no wonder, therefore, that he has lounged into the cathedrals of Spain, as a Choctaw on his travels would stroll among the apparatus of a philosophy chamber. Haply, both for a while. might be mightily tickled with so novel an amusement, in which their sole object was to gaze, to admire, and to pilfer. The royal robber would no doubt lay his hands on the superb and massy ornaments of the church, with as little ceremony and concern, as the "untutored Indian" would have in feeling and handling the magical workmanship of an electrical machine,

This too, sans doubte, might all be done from curiosity, sheer curiosity; and the results of both experiments have been equally curious. "Noli me tangere" was a motto which the Indian never knew, and the Corsican had forgotten; and thus they both agreed to touch and take; "but no such matter!" For when the "itching palm" of the arch emperour sacrilegiously attempted to purloin the treasures of the sacristy, without asking first the wings of its sculptured saints to transport it, he fatally found, like his unsophisticated brother of the woods, that his too meddlesome finger had struck the conducting wire of the battery, and what he had touched from amusement, had knocked him down in good earnest!

Alexander raved at a wound, and Buonaparte may yet die of a surprize!

Spain has been celebrated in classick annals, under the names of Iberia, Hesperia, and Hispania. It is so severed by nature from the continent, to which it is attached, that it forms in itself a disconnected and independent section of the earth. Whoever glances on the map will directly perceive that it is the very recess of the continent; and a modern traveller has pronounced it the finest portion of the globe, either in the old world or the new. In all the revolutions and wars of Europe, from the establishment of the Olympick Games to the present epoch, it has been a land of renown. Abounding in mines of silver and other precious metals, which have not been worked since the discovery of America, Spain is by many historians supposed to have been the Tarshish of the Hebrews and Phonicians, mentioned in scripture. Six hundred years before the