Note 136 — XXII.

A Peruvian author, Don J. A. Delavalle, gives in one of his works the following severe, yet faithful, portraiture of the state of letters in his native country:—"En un país en el que el cultivo de las letras ni constituye una profesion, ni crea una posicion social, ni procura lo necesario—no decimos para lucrar con ella—para conseguir el sustento para la vida, nos admiraremos de que haya quien escriba en Lima, y reputaremos como extraordinario el número de obras que han salido de sus prensas en 1860, por muy pequeño que este haya sido. Sin proteccion, pues, y sin estimulo, ni oficial, ni social, ¿ qué se podrá esperar de las letras Peruanas?" (Translation of the foregoing.) "In a country where the cultivation of letters is not a profession by itself, where literature confers no social position, and barely procures the necessaries of life,—we do not speak of realizing competence and independence,—we marvel there should be any one in Lima who writes at all, and we consider little less than extraordinary the number of books which have issued from its press in 1860, insignificant as the sum total may be. Without protection, without influence, and without stimulus, official or social, who can suffer himself to hope for a better future for Peruvian literature?" (Compare Peru in 1860, in the National Annual Register, by Alfredo G. Leubel, Lima, 1861.)