CLE3IENCIN, DIEGO, a patriotic Spanish statesman, and an author distinguished for the purity of his Castilian style, was, accord ing to his opponent, Puigblancb, the son of a Frenchman. He was born in the city of Murcia on the 27th of September 1765, entered the college of San Fulgencio in that city at the age of nine, distin guished himself so much that he was engaged to draw up a plan for the reform of the studies of the college while he was yet a pupil, and was appointed professor of theology and philosophy before he was twenty-one. He gave up the church, for which he was intended, and in which a brilliant prospect was opening before him, from attachment to a lady, whom he married in 1793, after an engagement of ten years, and with whom he lived happily for upwards of thirty. The Duke of Osuna made him tutor to his children, and while he held the post he arranged the duke's magnificent library, which was afterwards thrown open to the public. The favourite, Godoy, to whom the duko was obnoxious, drove him into an honourable banishment by appointing him ambassador first to St. Petersburg and then to Vienna ;,but his diplo matic duties never carried him further than Paris, where Clemencin, who accompanied him, made good use of the libraries of the capital. On his return to Madrid in 1801 he was appointed member of the Academy of History, and for the remainder of his life continued in honourable connection with that body, of which ho was for a long time the secre tary. In July 1807 be read before it his elogio,' or eulogy on Queen Isabella the Catholic, the patroness of Columbus, which was first printed by the academy in 1821, so long was the course of literature and study in Spain interrupted by revolution and war. Of these calamities Clemencin had his full share. Early in 1807 he had been appointed editor of the official Gazette' of Madrid, as well as of the Mercurio,' formerly conducted by Clavijo. [CutvLio.] The day after the patriotio insurrection of the 2nd of May 1308, the first outbreak of the great Peninsular war, which was suppressed for the moment with violence by the French, who then had military pos session of Madrid, Murat, their commander, sent for Clemencie, and den:ended of him how he came to insert in the ' Gaceta ' an article which had appeared just before the outbreak, in which ho contra dicted, and with truth, an article in some of the French journals respecting Ferdinand of Spain, then a prisoner at Valencay. Clemen
cin replied, that ho printed nothing without an authorisation from the Spanish government. "Very well," replied Murat, "then unless the order for the insertion of that article is produced within an hour you shall be shot." The threat would doubtless have been carried into effect, but that the official who had transmitted the order, who was Cienfuegos, a poet of some note, was found within the prescribed time by the French soldiers sent in search of him, and brought from his bed, where ho lay ill, to Murat, who sent him prisoner to France, where he died in the courso of the following year from.grief and indignation. Clemencin, who joined the cause of the patriots, was first engaged in editing a journal for the junta of Aragon, then as member of the Cortes of Cadiz, besieged by the French and assailed by the yellow fever, in drawing up and supporting the constitution of 1812. The absolutist reaction on Ferdivand's return in 1814, sent him to a country retirement at Fuenfria, a placo to which he was much attached, and where, when the times were against him, he was accustomed to devote hlmaelf to literary pursuits amid the pleasures of the country. In the second constitutionalist outburst of 1820 Clemencin was again deputy for Murcia, and first secretary, then presi dent of the Cortes, in which capacity, as also in that of minister, in found it necessary to address some strong language to King Ferdinand Such however was the general respect for his high character and hi: literary acquirements, that on the second reaction of 1823 he was only banished from Madrid, and in 1827 obtained permission to return after four years of his favourite Fuenfria. The third conatitutiona period of Spain raised him higher in honours than ever; but they came too late—he had lost his wife. He was appointed to draw uy the oath to be taken by the present queen, was named principa librarian to her majesty, and also a procer del reyno,' or peer of the kingdom. He was also appointed to the somewhat less desirable office of censor of the press, pursuant to the new decree on the press of the date of the 2nd of May 1833. He died of cholera, on the 30th o July 1834, at Madrid.