circumstances best described in his own preface to it. I shall give as copious extracts from this little book as my space will allow, for it is impossible, as I have proved by repeated efforts, to convey the same impression by any method of condensation within the reach of a compiler, which is the only character in which I have the presumption to call myself Colonel Sarmiento's biographer, a task which even his countrymen are too modest to assume at this moment of so much importance to their interests. My own interest in the subject has risen both from a personal one that grew out of his peculiar relations with my husband,—in whose name Colonel Sarmiento introduced the boon of Common School Education into Chili and the Argentine Republic, making the name of Horace Mann a household word with all whom he imbued with his own views upon that sujbject,—and from a deep interest in the nation whose highest aspirations rather than whose actual condition he represents. I wish therefore to place before the public, the series of pictures that give it a marked individuality, and that have in the course of a few years made me cognizant of its history, so obscured to the general eye by the repeated reactions it has suffered since the days of its hardly-won independence.
The work called originally "Civilization and Barbarism," but in the American translation entitled
