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Preface.
vii

to which they now look, rather than to Europe, for light and knowledge.

Colonel Sarmiento, in this work offered to the English and American public, gives no intimation of his personal relations with the tyrants, but as his whole life and much of the life of the Republic is connected with these relations, it is proposed to give a short account of its many "dramatic situations," incurred, by his love and utterance of truth. These will be better understood after than before the perusal of the main work. A complete life of Colonel Sarmiento, with all its interesting romantic and historical episodes, would fill two such volumes, but it is hoped that enough has been left untouched by the iron rules of publication to make him known, and to show that his present unsought triumph is one that a truly great man may be proud of. Constantly, from his earliest entrance into life, sacrificing all personal considerations, rather than swerve one iota from his principles, or deny himself the frank utterance of his convictions, he has proved conclusively to those who have studied his career, that, he is incapable of any mere personal ambition, though no one appreciates better the sympathy of his fellow-men.

It is the cultivated cities of the Argentine Republic, where Europeans find themselves at home in all that constitutes civilized society, and where the high culture