ART. II.--Historia de la Republica d'Andorra. (Published under the joint authority of the Spanish Government and the Government of the Republic of Andorre.) 1 vol. 8vo. Barcelona: 1845.

IT may seem a contradiction in terms to speak of disinterring a live republic. Yet we doubt whether one in a thousand of our fellow-countrymen has cared to acquaint himself with so much as the existence of a little commonwealth which stands next in antiquity to the Patrimony of St. Peter. There is not a canton of Switzerland, nor a principality on either shore of the Euxine, nor even a free Italian municipality, but is familiar to us all. The Pays de Vaud or the Grisons, Mingrelia or Imeritia, and San Marino itself (although a single village), are wellknown names. But the Republic of Andorre-or the Handorrensian Republic, to copy the more classic language, if that phrase be admissible, of the age of Eginhard-seems, in this country at least, to have lingered in perpetual oblivion. Meanwhile, the growth of political uniformity, which M. de Montalembert so grievously deplores, is daily throwing into sharper contrast the few petty and ancient communities which remain intact; and to that pious champion of conservative tradition we commend the almost only standing monument of ten centuries of local independence in a general flood of centralisation. Whilst

we write the dominions of Monaco are merged in the territories of Imperial France; and indeed, the very insignificance of Andorre serves at this moment as a no inapt illustration of the little that remains of local sovereignty in Europe.

The volume cited at the head of these remarks is the only authoritative sketch of the history of the Republic of Andorre. It was published fifteen years ago by the joint authority of the Spanish and Andorrian Governments; but as its authenticity depended upon its concurrence with certain ancient charters preserved only in the least accessible regions of the Pyrenees, on which it professed to be founded, it was not readily collated with these documents. The book appears to have been manufactured under a sort of contract between the two Governments, that the Andorrian authorities should furnish from their archives the information with which the Spaniards were no doubt unacquainted, and that the Spanish authorities should compose the history, of which the Andorrians were certainly incapable. But so little has it obtained notoriety from 'publication,' that its existence still appears unknown in any

other city than Barcelona; and the only copy of it we have seen exists among the people of Andorre, where it literally constituted the library of their executive chief! It is a faithful abstract of their original records, but no more than a skeleton of their oral traditions.

In touching so curious a subject, it may be worth while, for the sake of those interested in the darker periods of European history, to notice the correspondence of the charters of the Republic of Andorre with the historians of the Carlovingian age. It is certainly a fact worth comment, that while nearly all the charters prior to the middle age of the German and Italian Republics have disappeared, the original charters of this Republic have remained almost unsuspected in its Pyrenean archives for more than a thousand years.

But what, it may first be asked, is Andorre itself? It is a little state still holding the independence it derived from Charlemagne, too poor in modern times to provoke annexation, yet too hardy to have been subdued by its medieval neighbours; firm and free amid every external change; with a constitution older by four centuries than Magna Charta, yet still subsisting, almost unaltered, six centuries after Magna Charta had become the basis of our laws; where even Metternich would have been deemed a revolutionist and Ricardo have been certainly denounced as an impostor; the last people in Europe to profit by the intelligence which Christianity carries in its train, yet among the first champions of Christendom against the Moorish power; a people with whom the peaceful spirit of Arcadia breathes amid the military laws of Lycurgus, a race of shepherds and farmers all trained to arms, with a history unknown to Europe, though it nevertheless cherishes the memory of its Morgartens and its Tells; a state more ignorant of the arts than the Valais, yet not less jealous of spiritual encroachment than Geneva; its valleys among the most fertile even of the South, yet approached only over mountains snow-clad in mid-autumn; a people whose Doges are peasants and whose Rothschilds are pedlers; possessing the choicest Latin manuscripts of the ninth century, yet disdaining the innovation of a printing-press ever in the nineteenth; a republic without a road, without a navigable stream, and nearly without a house; where railways and telegraphs would be classed only with the Griffin and the Genius which the valour of its ancestors had driven out; such, in few words, are the salient characteristics of the little people of whom we write.

But before we digress into history, we must devote a few words to geography and government. Andorre, then, is a

republic isolated by mountains on every frontier, included neither in France nor in Spain, but intervening between the two countries, and (so far as their frontiers and government are concerned) by much more ancient than either. It lies between the Pyrenees of Arriège and the Pyrenees of Catalonia. The Republic consists chiefly of three valleys, one of which runs. parallel with, and the two others transversely to, the great ridge of mountains that connects the Atlantic with the Mediterranean shore. The frontier commonly follows the highest ridges of the Pyrenees, and thus the Republic extends over at once moor, and snow, and vale. Its greatest length is under thirty miles, its greatest breadth is under twenty, and its population is under eight thousand. Yet the natural strength of its situation renders it, even in this age of military science and political centralisation, not readily assailable; fully fifteen hundred men, or nearly one-sixth of the population, are always prepared to defend its independence; and the passes are not ill adapted for a new Thermopylæ. This little commonwealth was carved out by Charlemagne and his son, Louis le Débonnaire, during their Moorish wars, and preserves apparently the same frontiers and principles of government which it at first assumed. The subsequent imposition, as we shall observe, of a double protectorate which does not trench on its practical independence, is the only qualification of its sovereignty to this day.

The government of this peasants' commonwealth is that of an aristocracy legislating by representation. It is formed of six political divisions, each of which is coextensive with one of its six parishes. The boundaries of each appear to have remained without change from the age of Charlemagne. Each has its subordinate but distinct legislature, formed of those landholders on whose ancestors the hereditary right of legislation has been conferred. These bodies severally elect two consuls, who form the executive in each division, and serve for a year. The supreme legislature consists of twenty-four delegates of the six inferior legislatures, four being sent by each of the local assemblies. These are the two consuls for the current year, and the two next ex-consuls in each division. This assembly, which possesses the supreme authority, elects, again, two Syndics, who are the executive of the Republic. In practice, however, the first Syndic, commonly termed 'the Syndic,' transacts nearly the whole of the weighty affairs of Andorre. The Republic has also a complete administrative organisation without a single paid public officer, and the largest proportionate military establishment of Europe (such as it is) without a shilling of taxation. Such is the tradition which has descended in its integrity

from the time when the possession of land was attached to the idea of freedom; when union, within certain limits, was essential to security; when all men were presumed to be patriotic, and to be brave; when intellect was so ruled by strength that the hardiest mountaineer became the chosen chief, and when, as truly as in the Homeric age, un homme grand might always aspire to be un grand homme.

This traditional antiquity and simplicity of the government of Andorre exists to the same extent in its individual landholders,-long-descended patricians who are alleged to derive the grant of their lands from the Emperor Charlemagne, while they shear their sheep with their own hands. The soil is possessed by peasants, somewhat, indeed, as it is now chiefly possessed by that class in France and Spain under the progress of social republicanism; but for the precisely opposite reason that the nation has been too motionless to rise above a peasant's civilisation. The lands of the Montmorencys and the Rohans are now parted out in France among a class of peasants often superior in outward condition to the landholders of Andorre, but these landholders of Andorre are, if we may believe their title-deeds and traditions, by much more ancient than the Montmorencys and the Rohans.

A body of untutored rulers is here so brave that every man's religion is the defence of his rights; so benevolent, that in winter he shares his goods with the poorest around him: such private charities and public virtues in the lowlier conditions of existence may almost challenge the comparison whether Napoleon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these? We pause, however, for we may be told that these men are, after all, no better than traditionary boors; that their patriotism has been hid under a bushel, and that the annals of a people who, in the course of ten centuries, have contributed no single event to universal history, are not worth the trouble of their reclamation. A race of nobles represented from among their own order by an elective chief in knee-breeches, may certainly be now an anomaly in Europe; yet it is quite possible that many of those names which people the most cherished of the early legends of Wales and Scotland may have been associated with no greater outward civilisation than now prevails in Andorre. Paradoxical as it may seem, the feudal theory of nobility nowhere receives a more complete acceptance than among the Andorrian landowners, with whom luxury and education are pre-eminently wanting. They still defend and govern the land which their fathers conquered.

These few words may perhaps suffice to indicate the general

character of the little commonwealth which we are describing; and to justify us in calling attention for a few moments to the authenticity and genuineness of its charters. These early records are preserved in the government-house of the village of Andorre, the capital of the state, with a religious care which implies that, more than the mere written charters of the Republic, they are deemed the talismans of its independence. They have been seen by few and copied by none. Perhaps, indeed, two or three Spaniards and Frenchmen engaged in the neighbouring public administration of Arriège and Catalonia, and one Englishman, have alone been gratified with a sight of this sacred treasure. On one occasion, during the present century, the French Government attempted to procure copies of these charters; and on another, it kindly lent its influence to the curiosity of a foreigner, which graciously made it permissible to read the charters. The Spanish Government has also repeatedly applied for copies, but it has experienced invariably the same refusal; and the information doled out by the Andorrians in the little history to which we have referred, appears to have been conceded by them as an ultimatum, and an answer to all comers. The Republic could hardly have submitted to a more convincing test of its real independence. The Andorrian dragon appears to be too vigilant to permit the golden fleece to

be carried off.

The first credited tradition of Andorre dates from 778, and the first written charter which is known still to exist, from 801. In 778 two diplomas appear to have been issued by Charlemagne, the one granting to the see of Urgel (beyond the frontier in Catalonia) the tithes of the six parishes which now form the Republic, the other granting their inhabitants a distinct military organisation. In 801, a fresh diploma was issued by Louis, King of Aquitaine, and which was expressed to be made in right of his father Charlemagne. It constituted the people of Andorre an independent state. Whether the two former diplomas now exist in any shape is doubtful. But the original manuscript of the charter of 801 is still preserved among the archives of Andorre.

It happens that these two dates precisely coincide with the two principal expeditions undertaken by Charlemagne and his son Ludovicus Pius, otherwise called Louis le Débonnaire, against the Saracens, to the south of the Pyrenees. This double coincidence offers a peculiar confirmation of the authenticity of Andorrian traditions, because the rights acquired both in 778 and in 801 are alleged to have directly arisen from the successes of Charlemagne and Ludovic over these enemies. Take first