Conquest of Peru by the Spaniards." His Romance of the History of Spain. (3 vols. 8vo, 1831) is an interesting and well-written collection of tales founded on the historical or legendary history of his native country.
Sydney Smith, dining on some occasion with Rogers and Tom Moore, made allusion,in his own peculiar style, to literary lions, and the reception they were wont to meet with, on their first appearance on the horizon of London. "Here's a new man arrived; quick! put on the stew-pan,—fry away,—we'll soon have it out of him!" I don't know that this was exactly the fate of Trueba; but he was, doubtless, to some extent spoilt by being petted. "A man," acutely says Maginn, "who consents to be shown as a lion, runs the risk of being at last metamorphosed into an ass." He was a clever fellow enough; and if he had really and honestly worked, something might have been got out of him. As it was, " he wrote passable novels in irreproachable English"; but we need no Aristarchus to tell us that "they were not quite equal to the workmanship of his countryman, Cervantes." Where are they now? Echo answers, "Where?"—
"A boundless contiguity of waste!"
Trueba returned to Spain in 1834, and was speedily elected a member of the Chamber of Procuradores, and Secretary of Committee, where his talents as a linguist, and knowledge of English life and society, must have made him eminently useful. But his career was short; his death taking place October 4, 1835, at the age of about thirty, in Paris,—whither he had fled, as Fraser subsequently records, from Madrid, "his death accelerated, as was said, by the terrors of the murderous Spanish contest, into which he had thrust himself, without any suspicion of the danger he was drawing upon his head."
XIV.— EARL OF MUNSTER.
A reference to that bulky volume which has been called the Englishman's Bible,—Burke's Peerage,—will show that this gentleman was the eldest illegitimate son of King William IV., when Duke of Clarence, by Mrs. Jordan, the celebrated actress. He distinguished himself in many engagements in the Peninsular war, especially at Fuentes d'Onore, where he was wounded, and again at Toulouse; acquiring by his conduct and military abilities the friendship of the Duke of Wellington, by whom he was much esteemed.
In 1830, he was elevated to the peerage, under the title of Earl of Munster. Viscount Fitzclarence, and Baron Tewkesbury, in the peerage of the United Kingdom; with special remainder, in default of male issue, to his three brothers, primogeniturely, and their male descendants. This creation of the peerage of Munster gave rise to no small amount of clamour and discord in its day; unlike the treaty known by the same appellation, which gave religious peace to the Empire in 1648.
"Campaigning with the Tenth," says the authority before me, "at the close of the Peninsular war, he was dismissed with the other officers of that regiment, for having committed an unprecedented breach of etiquette in that corps,—by fighting! Quentin knew far better what was the duty
