"NEW occasions," sang a great American poet of freedom and of progress, "new occasions teach new duties"; and splendidly was the truth exemplified in Cuba in the era of which we have been writing in this volume. There befell the island at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century a new occasion, the greatest thus far in all its history since the landfall of Columbus. It was perhaps only partially realized at first, and it took many years for the complete realization to dawn upon the universal popular mind. But even before the realization came, the Cuban people, not yet cognizant of the tremendous force which was working within them, began to rise to meet the new occasion, the new opportunity which was opening before them, with a triumphant spiritual puissance which has not often been rivalled in the annals of the nations.

Writing of that very period, in his essay on Jean Paul Richter, and referring to the British domination of the sea which Nelson had achieved, to the mastery of the lands of Europe which Napoleon had won, and to the intellectual primacy which Germany—though beaten to the dust in war—was then enjoying, Carlyle observed that "Providence has given to the French the empire of the land, to the English that of the sea, to the Germans that of—the air!" It was a fine conception, as true then as it would be untrue to-day. In a significant sense the same shrewd observation is apt to the situation of Cuba a hundred years ago. Spain held control of the material interests of the island, on sea and on land, but she could not restrain the Cubans from self-control, which meant immeasurable progress, in the air—that is, in the intellectual life. It was thus intellectually, in the only way as yet within their power, that the people of the island met the new and transcendent occasion.

It was, as we have seen, a period of revolution and of counter-revolution, a time of flux, throughout the greater part of the world. The mighty liberal impulse of the French Revolution, following in the wake of the American revolution, was by no means annihilated by the infatuated imperialism of Napoleon or by the reactionary movement which prevailed for a time after his fall. It was felt, and it prevailed, in North and Central and South America, from the Golden Gate to the Strait of Magellan; and in the islands of the Caribbean and the Gulf. In Cuba, as we have seen, there seemed to be at first no response, for reasons which also we have hitherto considered. But all unconsciously the Cuban people received and felt the impulse, and answered it.

Periods of revolution are usually periods of intellectual activity, and such was the case in Cuba. While there was in the first quarter of the century little thought of a revolt against Spain, or of independence, the revolutionary spirit which was in the air inspired the minds of Cubans, not only with activity but also, largely, with thoughts and aspirations of freedom. There was indeed in particular a striking likeness between Cuba and the Thirteen Colonies in North America just before the Revolution in that country. It will be recalled that down to a few months, perhaps even weeks, before the Declaration of Independence in 1776, very few American leaders contemplated independence. The war which they had begun at Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill was not a war of secession, but a civil war intended merely to secure for British subjects in the colonies the same rights and privileges that British subjects in the British Isles enjoyed. But a little later it was seen that this would not suffice, and that complete separation and independence must be achieved. Precisely so did some of the foremost Cuban minds at the time of which we are writing, and indeed in much later years, incline toward reforms and autonomous freedom under the Spanish crown.

These men saw with exultation the enkindling of a spirit of liberty in the Iberian Peninsula. They saw the revolt of Spain against Joseph Bonaparte. They saw the Spanish people dictate to their Bourbon king that Constitution of 1812 which had it been triumphantly enforced would have marked an epoch in the history of the rights of man. They sympathized with and exulted in these things, and hoped for their extension in Cuba. It was only when they sadly realized that these things, even if gained for Spain, were not for Cuba, and that Liberal Spain was as illiberal toward Cuba as ever despotic Spain had been, that they turned from autonomy to independence. Then the intellectual activities which had been directed to the achievements of the Peninsula, were turned to the interests of the island.

JOSÉ MARÍA HEREDIA
JOSÉ MARÍA HEREDIA

The most striking exemplar of the pro-Spanish attitude of which we have been speaking, as well as perhaps the greatest of all Cuban poets, was JosÉ Maria Heredia; of whom the world too often thinks as a Spanish rather than as a Cuban genius. He was born in Cuba in 1803, the son of parents who had fled from Santo Domingo to escape the fury of the revolution of Toussaint l'Ouverture. His father had formerly been a Chief Justice of the Venezuelan court at Caracas, under the Spanish government, and was loyal to Spain, though he detested and protested against her tyrannies and corruption and imbued his son with a passionate love of liberty. The younger Heredia established himself in the city of Matanzas, as a successful lawyer. But already he had written many poems, chiefly of freedom. They were in praise of Spain, and of the Spanish aspirations for liberty which were manifested in the Constitution of 1812. Indeed, never did Heredia commit himself against Spain, harshly as he was treated by her. But the poems which he had written in glorification of the Peninsular struggles for liberty against Napoleon and against the Bourbons were recognized by his countrymen to be equally applicable to the Cuban struggle against Spain, which was already impending, and they were consequently taken up throughout the island in that sense and for that purpose. This circumstance, though unintended by him, subjected him to grave suspicion; and he was presently charged with complicity in an insurrectionary movement in 1823, and was banished from Cuba for life. After a brief visit to the United States he went to Mexico, became a government official, married, and spent the rest of his life there, with the exception of a few weeks in 1836, when the Spanish authorities permitted him to revisit Cuba, though their espionage made his visit anything but pleasant. He died in 1839.

Heredia, who has been called the Byron of Spanish literature, and who is claimed by Spain as one of the glories of her letters, is known in Cuba largely by his patriotic poems, and his poems on nature. In the United States, where because of his exile from Cuba his poems were first printed, he is chiefly known by three great compositions, two of which were translated into English by William Cullen Bryant. These are his "Ode to Niagara," Which ranks among the greatest poems ever written by any poet on that theme; his "Ode to the Hurricane"; and a sonnet addressed to his wife. It is with his political and patriotic poems, however, that we are now most concerned, and of them it may be said that seldom have the aspirations of a people for freedom been expressed with more passionate eloquence. His first important poem, "The Star of Cuba," written while he was yet in his teens, expressed a readiness to die, if need be, for Cuba, leaving his head upon the scaffold as a token of the brutality of Spain. Years afterward, in exile, he apostrophized Cuba as the "land of light and beauty," and then thus prophesied:

My Cuba! Thou shalt one day rise

From 'neath the despot's hand,

Free as the air beneath thy skies

Or waves which kiss thy strand.

In vain the traitor's noxious plots,

The tyrant's wrath is vain;

Since roll the surges of the sea

Between thy shores and Spain!

Though Heredia took little active part in the physical revolt of Cuba against Spain, his poems exerted during his lifetime a potent influence in aid of revolution, and that influence steadily increased until, nearly three score years after his death, his prophecy of Cuban freedom was splendidly fulfilled. He was the first great voice of Cuban freedom, the first great pioneer in that extraordinary intellectual development which made Cuban history memorable in the Nineteenth Century. Truly did the Spanish critic Menendez say of him that if his political activity did not equal that of other conspirators against Spain, and though he took no part in armed struggles, his intellectual influence was constant and supremely effective, since he surpassed in talents all his countrymen.

But men might fall a little short—if indeed they did so—of Heredia's singular genius, and yet be noteworthy figures in the intellectual world. Well comparable with Heredia in influence, though exerted far differently, was the brilliant Professor of Latin, philosophy and science in the University of Havana, Felix Varela y Morales. It used to be said, and not without reason, that it was he who first taught the Cuban people to think as Cubans. He was sent to Spain as a Cuban Deputy to that historic Cortes which met at Cadiz in 1823 and was dispersed by Ferdinand VII because of its Liberalism. Varela was among its most conspicuous members, and was among those whose arrest was ordered by the reactionary Bourbons. He fortunately found asylum under the British flag at Gibraltar, whence he made his way to the United States. There, at Philadelphia, he published during the remainder of his life, a weekly journal, El Habanero, which had a large though chiefly surreptitious circulation in Cuba, and which exerted an inestimable influence for the encouragement of patriotic endeavors. He died in Florida in 1853, and his remains rested there for nearly half a century, when, after the achievement of Cuban independence, they were transferred to his native land.

A name which we are not inclined to rank below any other in intellectual significance and influence in Nineteenth Century Cuba is that of the illustrious JosÉ de la Luz y Caballero, who was born in 1800 and died in 1862, too soon to see the beginning of that Ten Years' War to which his teachings had powerfully contributed. "The Father of the Cuban Revolution" the Spaniards called him, and more perhaps than any other man did he deserve that honorable distinction. It was as an educator of youth that this great man's great work was done. In the world-shaking revolution year of 1848, after O'Donnell has drowned the Cuban slave revolts in blood, and when Narciso Lopez was just preparing for his descents upon the island, Luz y Caballero opened in Cuba a high school for boys. It was not a political school; certainly not seditious, unless truth and virtue were seditious. Hundreds of Cuban patriots, including many of the leaders in the Ten Years' War and the War of Independence, have testified that it was his teaching that made them the aggressive, resolute, militant patriots that they were. Yet they have all been equally insistent that "Don Pepe" as they called him was never a political propagandist. He never incited them to revolt, never prejudiced them against Spain. Yet, said his Spanish critics and enemies, he prepared his pupils to conspire and to be garrotted!

Both accounts of his teaching were true, and together they formed the severest possible indictment of the Spanish rÉgime. The burden of his teaching was manhood. He and his assistants gave much attention to the ordinary academic studies, in science and the humanities. But constantly he impressed upon them the duty of being manly. That meant that they were to be true, pure, resolute against injustice, respecting themselves and respecting others as themselves, and ready if need should be to sacrifice themselves for the sake of duty. It was the highest and best form of practical ethical teaching. He might, it is true, have added at the end of each of his weekly discourses to his boys the words of Patrick Henry, "If this be treason, make the most of it." The Spaniards did regard it as treason, and it did certainly incite and foment insurrection against Spain. But so much the worse for Spain, if such teaching was incompatible with her rule in Cuba.

An important literary influence was exerted in Cuba, beginning in the latter part of the Eighteenth century, and reaching its height in the first third of the Nineteenth, by the society called "Friends of Peace," of which Domingo del Monte was the leading spirit. It was this organization which gave Varela his professorship in the University of Havana. It was it that gave a prize for the best poem on the birth of the princess who was to become Isabella II of Spain; a prize which was won by a lad of sixteen. This was Jose Antonio Echeverria, who afterward edited a literary journal called El Plantel, and still later became one of the leaders of the strife for independence. Another protÉgÉ of Del Monte's—for he was a wealthy patron of letters, at Havana—was Ramon Velez y Herrera, who was born in 1808 and died in 1886. He devoted his attention chiefly to depicting in poetry the life, manners and customs of the common people of Cuba, and particularly of the peasantry. Still another was JosÉ Jacinto Milanes, who was born in 1814 and died in 1863. He was preeminently the poet of "local color" in nature. No other has quite so richly and so perfectly embodied Cuban landscapes in verse. But both these poets also wrote in behalf of Cuban freedom.

Domingo del Monte himself wrote some poetry, but much more in prose, and he had the distinction of being practically the founder of political tract and pamphlet writing, an art which was largely practised with powerful results. He wrote in 1836 a notable criticism of the despotic administration of Tacon, and an analysis of the condition in which Cuba found herself under such government. This opened the way for a veritable flood of political tracts.

Conspicuous among them were the writings of JosÉ Antonio Saco, who was born in 1797 and died in 1879. He was both a rival and a friend of Varela, and was the latter's successor in his professorship when Varela went to Cadiz and then fled to America. After Varela's arrival in the United States, Saco formed a literary and patriotic partnership with him, and together they edited the Cuban Review, a literary and critical journal of high rank, which commanded international attention. The American historian and literary critic, George Ticknor, said of it that perusal of it greatly impressed him with the amount of literary talent that existed in Cuba. The Review, he declared, far surpassed anything of the kind in any other of the Spanish or former Spanish colonies, and indeed "a review of such spirit, variety and power has never been attempted even in Madrid." Of course, Saco was exiled by Tacon, the immediate cause of offense being a pamphlet exposing and denouncing some of the more flagrant evils of the slave trade. The result was, however, that in exile Saco wrote one of the most elaborate and exhaustive histories of slavery in existence in any language, beside continuing his occasional political tracts. Nor did his influence end with his death and the laying down of his pen, for portions of his writings figured conspicuously and effectively in the literary propaganda which formed the prelude to the War of Independence.

Gabriel de la Conception Valdes was another of the protÉgÉs of Del Monte. He was born in 1809 and died in 1844. His father was a mulatto barber and his mother was a Spanish dancer, and he himself was permitted to remain illiterate in boyhood. While working as a maker of tortoise shell combs he was taught to read, and soon developed a passion for books. From reading he proceeded to the writing of poetry, adopting the pen name of "Placido" from the name of Placido Puentes, a druggist of Havana who encouraged his literary efforts to the extent of giving him pen and ink and paper, and a desk in his shop at which to sit and write whenever he felt inclined. Valdes was a voluminous writer, above most of his contemporaries, and while much that he wrote was mediocre, many of his poems were of high merit, and some of them deserve to rank among the best in Cuban literature; indeed, they would be noteworthy in the literature of any land. Especially meritorious are his poems about the slave trade and his apostrophes to Liberty. Because of these he was accused of complicity in an attempted negro uprising. He was hurried through a farcical trial, in which no real proof of his guilt was presented. Indeed, there is good reason for believing that he was entirely innocent. But he was found guilty, and was put to death; repeating aloud, as he walked to the place of execution, one of his poems on liberty.

JOSÉ MANUEL MESTRE

Advocate, philosopher, journalist and revolutionist, JosÉ Manuel Mestre was born in Havana in 1832. He was a professor of both law and philosophy in the University until he resigned because of governmental injustice to a colleague. For a time he taught on La Luz's school of El Salvador, and as a lawyer he defended Abad Torres who was charged with trying to murder the Archbishop of Santiago. During the Ten Years' War he was in New York, a member of the Cuban Junta, a diplomatic agent at Washington, and one of the editors of "El Nuevo Mundo." After the Treaty of Zanjon he returned to Cuba, and died in Havana in 1886.