Part 2 — THE SPANIARDS AT HOME.

There is something very pleasant in waking some morning in a strange country, with strange faces around us, a strange language ringing in our ears, strange costumes, strange institutions, strange everything—something, we fancy, half akin to what Byron felt when he woke one morning to find himself famous. It is pleasant to step from New York to Cadiz, from the heart of the New World into an historic city, that was as historic before our nation was born as it is to-day; that has not cared to march overmuch with the age, yet has never drifted backward, and still stands there, as it did long ago, the “white-walled Cadiz,” rising sheer out of the waters, with its long, straight streets and tall houses sleeping by the golden bay.

It is pleasant, we say, to find ourselves here breathing awhile from the heat of the strife that beats over there for ever and knows no rest; to open our eyes upon “something new and strange”; to miss for once the eternal stages and the rumble and the jingle of the cars, and the multiplicity of signs, and names, and glaring advertisements, crowding in upon us at all times and in all places.

It is not unpleasant even to miss our dames for awhile with their exaggeration of wealth and extravagance, resting our eyes instead on the modest black robes, nunlike in simplicity, crowned by the bewitching mantilla of the beauties whom Byron sang.

As you look into the street, the feeling grows upon you that you are gazing on a moving panorama pencilled by the old Spanish painters. There pass the blooming señorita, fresh as a rosebud, side by side with the duenna, yellow and puckered: how they resemble la Joven and la Vieja of Goya. That little beggar-boy, with those beautiful black eyes and a carnation in the olive cheek, sprawling in his picturesque rags on the pavement, is surely a brother to that of Murillo, so studiously engaged in performing an operation on his person more necessary than elegant. Here saunters a lazy soldier smoking his cigarette; there an old padre totters with bended head hidden under the large hat, snuff-box in hand, and an old calf-skin volume under his arm; he has just stepped out of his gilded frame. The trappings of the mules, the brown faces and merry eye of the muleteer, were known to us long ago on canvas. Nor are there wanting those pale ascetic countenances where religion, and intellect, and inspiration are so marvellously blended: you see them in the pulpit and on the altar, in the cloister and the convent walls. In our last article,[201] we ventured to assert that the Spaniards were the purest race in Europe; and not the meanest proof of the truth of this assertion might be furnished by their paintings. Those who pride themselves on the blue blood that runs in their veins have their galleries filled with portraits of the family, where you may trace the same lineaments handed down from sire to son for generations, which no change of time or costume can efface. The Spanish painters have furnished us with the portraits of their nation, and a beggar to-day might point with pride to his progenitor on the canvas of Murillo.

How different is the life here from ours!

There are only two meals, unless you choose to take what the Spaniards call “lonch.” On rising, the boy brings you your bath, and, if you care for it, as you are sure to do, a cup of coffee. If you have business to transact, you go to your office: if not, you take a book or a newspaper, and saunter into the garden, while the morning is fresh and a thousand delicious odors are around you. At half-past ten or eleven the household meet at breakfast, when you pay your respects to the “señorita,” the dear little lady, as the servants entitle your hostess, and inquire if she has passed the night well. The breakfast is similar to the French dejeuner: a variety of courses, with perhaps some delicious fruits, and a cup of cafe con leche at the end. While we are breakfasting, a friend or relative of the family may enter, and, as he sits and jokes, he produces his cigarette, ignites and smokes away as only a Spaniard can, with an ease and a grace and a thorough enjoyment that are enviable. This may startle our lady readers, but remember we are in Spain; the dining-room is spacious and lofty, the windows open, and the pure clear air flower-scented, or, if in season, loaded with the breath of the orange blossom, gains rather than loses by the transient odor so faintly discerned of the delicious Havana leaf. The breakfast ended, your host hands a cigar around to each of the gentlemen: the ladies remain to chat them out, and then everybody goes about his business. And here let us answer once for all a ridiculous question that has often been put to us. Ladies when speaking of their Spanish sisters are apt to say: “Oh! yes, I know they are very charming and graceful, and the mantilla is a love of a costume, and so becoming to a dark complexion; but tell me, now, is it not true that—they smoke?” The astonishment of a Spanish gentleman on being asked by every foreigner he meets if his wife and daughters—for to such the question really reduces itself—indulge in “the weed,” is just as great as our own would be on a similar query being put to us regarding our ladies.

We meet again at dinner at six or seven o’clock. Your host may possess a French cook—we beg his pardon—artiste; if not, you will have a Spanish dinner unflavored, since we must confess it, by the too fragrant garlic, which is confined to the mountaineers up in the Basque Provinces. You have some dishes cooked in oil, and it is so pure and good that you very soon get to like it. There is genuine “Vino de Jerez” on the table, undoctored for the market, clear as amber, ambrosial as nectar, delicious in bouquet and flavor. You will be astonished at the Spaniards taking so little of it; many never touch it at all. They prefer claret or pure water, the climate not admitting of stronger drinks. “Borracho,” drunkard, in Spain, as in most southern countries of Europe, is the vilest title you can give a man. There are splendid olives and rare fruits, preserved, or as they dropped from the hand of nature. More friends may call during dinner, ladies, perhaps, this time, and your hostess never disturbs herself with the thought that they have come to see what is on the table. “Señor don Rafael, beso a Usted la mano,” says the lady to her visitor—“I kiss my hand to you.” “Beso a Usted los pies, señorita,” responds the cavalier with a bow—“I kiss your feet, my dear lady.” Dinner over, cigars are again produced, and we all adjourn to the patio, it being too warm for music or cards. The elders assemble and discuss the funds, or times, or the state of the country. Politics are very rife at present, and the fire and animation of the speakers, the variation of their tones, the free and striking gesture—for with a Spaniard the whole body speaks—are a pleasing novelty to us, accustomed to a tamer mode of conversation. The ladies nestle together, and are deep in the mysteries best known to themselves. The younger gentlemen gradually detach themselves from their elders, and leave the country to go to ruin, while they indulge in less momentous but far more interesting topics with the ladies, and give vent to their Andalusian wit.

The patio is a feature in a Spanish house. It is a species of court, large or small, according to the dimensions of the mansion, paved with flags or marble, with perhaps a fountain playing in the middle and cooling the atmosphere; in the marble basin silver and gold fish leap, and a few rare plants freshen around it. High overhead is a roof of glass, where a canvas screen keeps out the sun when his rays are too powerful. The house, generally of two stories in the south, but very lofty, is built around this quadrangle, the upper floor reaching partly over it, supported by pillars, sometimes richly wrought and adorned. Paintings or engravings relieve the bare white walls. On the one side a doorway, with a little convent grating to peer from, completely shuts out the view of the street; on the other, an iron gate opens to the garden, where you see the yellowing oranges clustering bright in their dark-leaved recesses, and brilliant flowers and odor-bearing shrubs gladden the eye and soothe the senses. From the patio we proceed to the Alameda or paseo—park or promenade as we should call them. Here all the world assembles, seated in groups, sauntering up and down in little bands, small knots standing a little aloof to discuss some grave topic—nobody alone. Laughter resounds on all sides—laughter and the Castilian tongue everywhere: ringing out in music from the mouths of the dames, swelling and falling and adapting itself to every changing emotion in the very emotional breasts of those men, rippling over and enchanting our ears in the tiny mouths of these children. To a stranger the scene is bewitching; the softness of the air and the perfume that lingers on it; the animation in the countenances and gestures of all; the grace of the ladies’ costume, the ever-fluttering fan which only a Spanish woman knows how to use; the sallies of wit in tones that mock the best comedian; a free-heartedness and union among all, springing undoubtedly from the religion which makes all men brethren. At the very entrance of the Alameda there is probably a tiny chapel of the Virgen Santissima, with ever-burning light, where men and women pause to drop a prayer as they go to and from their diversion. Imagine such a thing in Central Park!

We are in Andalusia, and of all the lovely spots in this lovely land we think it bears off the palm. Columbus, when the glories of the Antilles burst upon him after that dreary and momentous voyage, compared the climate more than once to an April day in Andalusia. Everything it produces is of the best—corn, wine, fruits, cattle. The bread is the most delicious and whitest we have ever tasted or seen. The nights are most lovely. The sky deep and clear; all the stars of heaven seem to cluster above us, and the moon shines with a startling brilliancy on the white houses of the sleeping town, on the brown cathedral that towers above all, on the dark thick clustering leaves of the orange-trees, on the silent streets, narrow and straggling, showing every stone and pebble on the one side with minute distinctness, while the other is buried in mysterious shadow. Not a sound is heard save the cry of the sereno calling out the hour as he passes his lonely rounds.

The Andaluz is the embodiment of his climate. A child of the sun, of the clear free air, with wealth in his fields and the great ocean smiling all around his coast, where the ships of all nations come to lade and unlade, he yearns for the freedom which strangers hold so carelessly, and is ready to fight and to die for it. So Andalusia is the hotbed of revolution. As the Biscayan is famed for his unyielding nature, the Gallego for his stupidity, so is the Andaluz for his wit. He speaks rapidly and with many gestures, clipping his words—a grave sin against the sonorous Castilian. He is handsome, quick, fiery, with a keen eye for ridicule, but a good nature that can never resist a joke even if it be at his own expense. People say that he derives his comely form and graceful extremities from the Moors, but he would not thank you to tell him so. The Andaluza is worthy of such a partner, if she does not surpass him. If he is a Republican, she is a Carlina, for Don Carlos with her means religion, and religion means everything. Byron has painted her, and very faithfully. His remarks on the state of the country might be written to-day. He moralizes over the barbarity of the bull-fights, too. They are dying out now in exact proportion as man-fights are gaining ground with us. Of the two, we must say we infinitely prefer the bull-fight. It is amusing to hear Englishmen and Americans virtuously indignant on the immorality and barbarism of such an exhibition, as they bury themselves next moment in a three-column description of the latest feat of the fancy, or the glorious contest for hours between two miserable dogs or wretched cocks. We are lovers of fair play, manliness, and good-fellowship. We do things in an honest, straightforward fashion, and the hand that shakes another’s preparatory to the combat quite takes the sting from the blow that maims his fellow-man for life or beats that life out of him. So we look on and applaud and make our bets on the contest, and curse the wretch who has lost his own miserable life and our money.

But we are straying into civilization; let us go back to barbarism and Andalusia. The vineyards are decidedly unpicturesque; the vines low, the soil yellow. But the life at vintage season is

The agricultural laborers are very well paid in Spain, getting as much as one dollar a day or even more. The work is terrible; out the whole day under a burning sun, delving and cutting and trenching a dusty soil, with a pick instead of a spade to penetrate below the upper stratum of dust. They are tall wiry fellows, most of them from the mountains, brown as the soil, and sinewy, with dark eyes and crisp, close-cut black hair. A quarter of an hour spent in merely looking on overpowers us; but they seem made for the sun. The food that supports them under such toil is composed chiefly of a single dish called gazpacho, and gazpacho merits special mention. Fill a large bowl with water and vinegar, we do not know the exact proportions, but there is a great deal of vinegar, and, so far as we recollect, oil is added. A quantity of bread is thrown in to soak, and some herbs, with, perhaps, a slight flavor of garlic; and there you have gazpacho, the staple food of these men in the hot months. You eat a small piece of some light meat and a salad before it; a piece of toast fried in oil is not bad; drink a glass of water or two after; light the never-failing cigarette, and you are cool and refreshed. It may not seem a very delicate diet to us; but when the Levante, the hot desert wind laden with the finest of the burning sands, comes choking the atmosphere, and penetrating every crevice with a furnace heat all the day and all the night, burning the blood in the veins till it reaches fever-heat, and leaving you weak and utterly prostrate, “with just strength enough to thank God that breathing is an involuntary action”—as a gentleman aptly described to me the effects of the sirocco, the Italian equivalent—then place before a man in such a state of lassitude a steaming joint of roast beef with the heavy incidentals, and he will turn from it with disgust. At such moments the gazpacho seems the most delicious dish under the sun. The houses and furniture of these laborers are the neatest and cleanest in the world. The same feeling runs through high and low in Spain; their houses are models of freshness and purity. And Jacobo or Perico turns out on the Sunday in linen fine as his master’s, in jacket of velvet with buttons or bells of gold, a crimson scarf round his waist, and patent-leather shoes shining on his feet. He can joke and chat with his master with an easy freedom that never passes beyond the bounds of respect and never sinks into servility. As you pass him on the road alone or with any number of his companions, they all lift their sombreros with an inborn grace, and a genial buenos dias or buenas tardes, señor. But the new order is trying, and with some success, to change all that; though a stranger still meets in Spain with that rare yet most Christian thing, unbought courtesy.

The Gallego is the very opposite of the Andaluz—a rude, simple mountaineer, he is the hewer of wood and drawer of water to his countrymen. He is honest and open as the day, with a childlike affection for his master, and is particularly happy at a blunder. Rare are the stories told in Andalusia of the Gallegos. We give two, rather as indicating the estimation in which they are held than as happy specimens of the Andalusian broma.

When the post was first introduced into Spain, the postmaster of a small town in the north was astonished, one day, by a Gallego bursting in on him with the query, delivered in stentorian tones:

“Is there a letter here for me from my father?”

“I do not know, sir; who is your father?”

This was too much for the Gallego; the idea of anybody in this world being unacquainted with his parent was so overpowering that, not being able to restrain his feelings, he rushed from the spot, and was not heard of for some time afterwards. Meanwhile, a letter arrived directed in a style of calligraphy that might have done credit to Mr. Weller, Senior, addressed

To my Son At San Juan.

Having sufficiently recovered from the violent shock given to his feelings, the Gallego once more presented himself at the post-office with the same question, “Is there a letter here from my father?”

“Oh! yes,” said the official, immediately producing the mysteriously addressed missive; “here, this is from your father. Take this one,” and delivered it without the slightest doubt as to the accuracy of its destination.

Another, on finding himself for the first time in a city, as he stood gaping and wondering at the sights around him, suddenly heard a shrill voice cry out, “I don’t want to go to school; the master beats me.”

He looked around for the child, but the only object that met his gaze was a parrot, mowing and chattering in a cage, and bobbing, wriggling, and looking at the Gallego with its cunning old eye forty different ways at once.

“I don’t want to go to school; the master beats me.”

The bewildered Gallego stared, and pondered, and, after a deep consultation with himself, came to the conclusion that the voice must proceed from the cage; from the strange specimen of humanity before him, so marvellously resembling a bird; but a bird talking the purest Castilian, though with something of a sharp accent, was a clear impossibility. His simple, good-nature was hurt at the idea of having wronged a fellow-creature even in his thoughts. So turning he excused himself: “Pardon me, child; I thought it was a bird.”

Of all traits in the national character, their universal civility astonishes an American or Englishman, accustomed as we are to the every-man-for-himself principle; yet how few we meet who do not consider the Spaniards as a treacherous, revengeful, and bloodthirsty race! Our own statistics, we fear, would furnish but a sorry set-off against theirs for crime in every phase; and particularly for the most cowardly, brutal, and premeditated assaults and assassinations, ending too often with the escape of the culprit. The quarrels in Spain between man and man arise generally from some love affair or political difference, very rarely from money. Two peasants are drinking in a tavern, the wine excites their fiery blood; one has lost his novia, the other has won her; a blow or an insult is given; they draw their knives, and adjourn to fight—“just like gentlemen.” It is, in fact, a duel, which common-sense has not yet been able to laugh out of Spain. No pecuniary damages, won by the cold arguments that sway a court of law, can heal the wound of honor in the chivalrous breast of the Spaniard; and not a few examples have we lately had of lives lost in this way. One was most tragic in its end as in all its bearings; I allude to the duel between Don Enrique de Bourbon and Montpensier. And surely never was presented on the stage a scene more dramatic or striking. Don Enrique was by profession a naval officer, high in the service of his royal relative, Queen Isabella, a young, gallant, and efficient sailor, with a promising future opening before him. He was happy in the love of a lady destined as all understood to be his; when suddenly Montpensier stepped in and won her, scarcely by force of personal attractions, for he was already well advanced in years; but the marriage was a closer link to the throne. Don Enrique vowed the death of the man who had crossed his life at the threshold. But his schemes of vengeance were baffled; an order came to quit the country, ostensibly for having joined in conspiracy against the throne. Deprived at once of his love, his command, and his country, life was closed to him. From his retirement he sent challenge after challenge to Montpensier, and vilified him even in the public press, as he could not force a response from him; but to no purpose. Montpensier, high in favor at court, secure in possession and in power, could safely affect to despise the ravings of a madman. By-and-by came the revolution which drove Isabella out. Now was Don Enrique’s chance, and he hastened to seize it. As expulsion under the queen’s reign was a virtue in the eyes of the new government, he applied for restoration to his country and his rank in the navy. The first request was granted, the second denied; as the government had proclaimed an end to the Bourbon race, no member of that race could take rank under them, unless he renounced his title. Here again he traced the hand of Montpensier. If he could have nothing else, at least he would have revenge, being now in the same city with the man who had crossed him at every step of his career. He sent his last challenge, publishing it at the same time in the press, enumerating the occasions on which he had sent similar messages, which had ever been met by the silence of fear. He heaped insults upon him, apostrophizing him as a “pastillero frances,” a fellow ready to soil his hands with the pettiest and meanest intrigue. Montpensier was at the time a candidate for the Spanish throne; for the kingship of a people in whose eyes honor was ever dearer than life; further silence would ruin his prospects; so at last he was forced out of his reserve, and, in a letter that sounded well, accepted the challenge as one which a man of honor could not pass over in silence, disclaiming at the same time any antagonism to its author personally; if there was any justice in what he said, it was the result of accident; in fact, leaving people to understand that he never troubled his head about the man. They met on a cold gray morning, and the chances of success leaned decidedly on the side of Don Enrique. A young, bold man, to whom deadly weapons had been playthings from his infancy, he was urged on by a life of hate to slay the man who had blighted that life and darkened its promising opening; his opponent was a middle-aged man, near-sighted, who bore the reputation of a littérateur rather than a fighter. Both felt that perhaps a crown as well as a life hung on the trigger. Scarce was the word given to fire when the bullet of Don Enrique brushed his foe, and Montpensier’s lost itself in the air. A second shot, and they still stood face to face uninjured. “Està afinando”—“He is getting closer,” whispered the prince to his second, as he took the last pistol from his hand. The words are remarkable as expressing the coolness of the man, whose eye took in everything at such a moment, and perhaps something more. At the next discharge, the bullet of the man who, whether designedly or not, had met him and beaten him at all points, pierced his breast; he sprang into the air, fell forward, and rolled contorted on the ground, a corpse—a theme for novelist as well as moralist: it looked like fatality.

But from such sad scenes we are happy to turn to others more worthy of our attention and more characteristic of the nation at large. The thing that of all others cannot fail to strike the visitor is the intense religion displayed everywhere. “Ay, Maria!” “Por Dios!”—“For God’s sake”—“Ay, Dios mio,” are the expressions that buzz around our ears all day. The holy name is a household word with them, pronounced at all times and on all occasions, but with a reverence that never shocks. When they wish something done, they say “Dios quiere”—“God grant it”; when they bid you good-by, “Adios—Vaya Usted con Dios—Queda Usted con Dios—Que Dios te guarda”—“Go with God—Rest with God—May God guard thee.” They speak of the blessed sacrament as “Su Majestad”—“his majesty,” of the Blessed Virgin always as “la Santissima Virgen”—“the most Holy Virgin.” The graveyard is “el campo santo”—“the holy field”: so like the old Catholic “God’s acre” that Longfellow loves. When they wish to express intense horror of a thing, they make the sign of the cross on their foreheads, lips, and breast, and then in the air, as though to place that invincible sign between them and the object of their abhorrence. The vast majority of the towns and villages are named after the saints, and each one has its special patron as well as the patron of the district. And that intense faith in intercessory prayer to some special saint which holy writers urge us to cultivate is born in them. On the festival of Good Friday throughout Spain, the municipality and gentlemen of the towns walk dressed in evening costume side by side with the poor. Not a vehicle is to be seen in the street: all the world is there to watch and pray. The new government, Prim’s, gave the order for coaches to run as usual on Good Friday, in outrage of a custom immemorial in the nation, and an honor to them as to all Christendom of whatever creed. But the coachmen as well as their masters proved better Christians than their rulers; and on the day in question not a conveyance was to be seen, save a solitary coach, which the populace immediately seized, compelling its occupant to descend, who proved to be a scared member of the diplomatic body. The celebration of Holy Week in Seville attracts the world thither.

The modern churches in Spain, particularly in Madrid, though for the most part spacious and lofty, do not impress one with their beauty. To those accustomed to associate their ideas of religion with the Gothic style of architecture, the altars will not be pleasing. Spiral pillars wriggle to the roof, inwrought and gorgeously painted. The vases are filled with silver and gold filigree work wrought to imitate flowers. There are many figures, small or large, of el niño Jesu, or la Santissima Virgen, or the saints, not always displaying the most finished art, decked out with a costume of sober black or gorgeous color and texture, glittering with gold and precious stones and ornaments of choice and antique workmanship. Little thanksgiving offerings surround them. Such things as these look like superstition to the cold eye of a man to whom faith is folly and reverence ignorance. But there is something powerful in the simple, earnest belief of the people who pray before them, and are content to be thus reminded of the great and good God and Virgin Mother, who are willing to receive the offerings of the meanest; a reverend familiarity with God is thus created which those people bear about with them. These men and women go into the church to pray: their very costume is befitting the sanctuary; and there is very little of that newspaper religion which some of our weekly journals piously advocate by so carefully announcing “where the best dresses and prettiest faces are to be seen.” On the walls hang magnificent paintings. The treasures of Murillo are in the cathedral of Seville. They were placed there by his own hand, having been painted for their several positions that the light might fall on them in such or such a manner. And it is not unpleasant to think of the sun rising and falling day after day as though in obedience to the great master who has passed away, bringing out their beauties faithfully in accordance with his wish. The construction of the cathedral itself is a triumph of architecture. Not a stone has shifted from its place since it was first laid there: there is no sinking or rising in the floor: and to-day you may pass your cane over the surface and not a joint offers the slightest obstruction.

The very names of the people are taken from religion and the mysteries of religion in the same spirit with which they named their discoveries after Santa Cruz, San Domingo, San José, Trinidad. Among men’s Christian and surnames we continually find Jesu, Jesu Maria, Juan de Dios, Santa Cruz, Salvador; among the women, Concepcion, Dolores—a sweet name after the Mother of Sorrows, Maria de los Angeles, and the like.

The very streets and the public places are christened in the same way; and the ships baptized and launched with religious ceremonies, a custom that prevails also in France.

They preserve the old gospel use of the word woman. That is the title by which the husband addresses his wife as often as any other. She calls him hijo, son, or hombre, man. “Hija de mi alma,” daughter of my soul, is also very common. Ceremony is only employed with strangers; tu, thou, is the form in which intimate friends are always addressed. After becoming acquainted, you call the lady of the house and her daughters, whether grown up or young, by their maiden names simply. It is amusing to hear little ones who can scarcely lisp address each as señor and señora.

They have a fair supply of newspapers, and very able ones, in Spain; though, as usual, those that enjoy the widest circulation at present are devoted to the dissemination of false principles. They are cried out in the streets not by newsboys as with us, but principally by old blind men, who stand in the most public places with a tablet of the latest news on their breasts, and having got their lesson by rote spout away untiringly.

The club is becoming a very favorite institution, and is, in fact, the stronghold and rendezvous of political parties. There is a very famous one in Madrid, which numbers among its members such men as Castelar, Moret, and others. They meet sometimes for public discussion; and those great orators rise there to propound their theories as earnestly as in the Cortes.

They have a code of intercourse worthy of imitation. When a Spanish family takes up its quarters at a hotel or in a new place, the neighbors, though perfect strangers, call, leave their cards, and go away. If their acquaintance is desired, they are waited upon and conversation ensues; if not, the stranger simply returns his card in the same manner as the other was received; and no slight or grievance is felt or intended.

The amusements are various. Apart from the opera, theatre, and those common to all nations, they are very fond of an indoor game called volante, which is simply battledoor and shuttlecock; ladies and gentlemen play at it together. There is also a very favorite game of cards, tresillo, to which we have no equivalent. The climate compels the Spanish women to lead a more indoor life than with us. The men are fond of riding, hunting, and shooting. They sit as erect on horseback as statues; and the army officers are very fond of displaying the motions rather than the speed of their steeds. Mules are in great demand; for the roads in Spain, except in the neighborhood of the great towns, are very bad; mere bridle-paths most of them. Seated in a vehicle that would be a treasure in an art museum for antiquity, construction, and shape, with a team of six or eight of these animals to jolt you anywhere, is a position more than pleasant. The jingle of the little bells with which the harness is adorned, the cracking of the driver’s whip, the tones in which he endeavors to animate the vicious brutes, now cajoling them in accents that might win the heart of a maiden, again pouring forth a volley of imprecations on their heads and tails and pedigree, as though they were human, is a study. You can never trust these animals, and it is always the safer plan to give their hoofs what a sailor would call sea-room. An archbishop, passing along the streets one day, suddenly came upon a string of them, and as suddenly crossed to the other side of the street. “O Señor Arzobispo,” said the muleteer, “you need not be frightened. These are harmless animalitos.”

“Yes, I know they are harmless,” replied his grace, “and that is the reason I cross here; if they were not, I should go to the next street.”

This fact of the roads being so bad and the intercommunication so deficient, coupled with tales of brigandage, gives strangers the idea that travelling in Spain is very insecure. We might pass from end to end of the land, unknown and unarmed, with far greater safety than during a five minutes’ walk through many a street in New York or London after nightfall. We had an instance of brigandage and its treatment in Spain during Prim’s régime, a time when the country was as convulsed as at present. Encouraged, no doubt, by the lamentable success of a similar exploit in Greece, some miscreants carried off a merchant from Gibraltar, and demanded a round ransom as the forfeit of his life. Prim, without a moment’s hesitation as to the nice question of treating with brigands, or a thought of where the ransom was to come from, paid it, and sent four of the civil guard to follow up the robbers, which they did so successfully that they shot them all and retook their booty. We have not heard of brigandage since in Spain, notwithstanding the highly touched pictures presented, the other day, of an attack on a railway train, accompanied by smoke and powder, and brigands in the stage costume of centuries back.

This civil guard is an excellent institution. The body is recruited from the best ranks of the soldiery. It is a distinction to be admitted among them, which engenders an esprit de corps that makes them the terror of the wrong-doer and the right arm of order. We ourselves might take a lesson from the incident mentioned above, if we are to credit the reports of the Lowery gang.

They have but one great line of railroad in Spain, which runs through the country from north to south. The train creeps along at a steady thirty miles an hour, without a moment’s variation. To a stranger, wishing to catch a glimpse of the country, this is highly advantageous; as he is not whirled away at a rate that presents to his anxious eye trees, houses, mountains, streams, in a phrenzied panorama. For our present notions of commerce it may be too slow, and a man in a hurry feels half inclined to get out and walk; but as a set-off against this, the Spaniards pride themselves on not having had a single accident accompanied by loss of life since the railroad was first started. You are rolled through the fertile plains and swelling uplands of Andalusia, rich in corn and wine and oil; through fields, and orange and olive groves, dotted with white towns and modest villages, where the church-tower ever soars above all as a landmark. You pass Seville; and as its associations crowd upon you, fain would you linger amid the gay society of the lovely city smiling amid its groves and gardens; dreaming day by day in las delicias; lost amid the treasures of art that make every boy in the street an efficient critic, so accustomed is his eye to the beautiful and the true. Famous spots and historic cities greet you as you go. The Escurial looms up, a white, silent palace with deserted windows, standing out in startling relief from a semi-circle of bare mountains. Not a soul was to be seen around it; the monks had been just expelled; not a sound to break the painful silence that seemed to emanate from the gloomy pile. It stood there as the great king left it, a type of himself, out of the world in a grandeur of isolation; a something that ought to have passed away, unknown in these days. Had a troop of cavaliers with pennon and plume and glistening mail shone out a moment on the mountain-side, it would have seemed in keeping with the place rather than strange. There is almost a contrast between the ages as our little engine puffs and snorts and fumes, fretting to “go ahead” and leave it, staring out of its silent windows, unmoved, untouched by the age, which busies itself with things and not with ideas.

Before arriving at Madrid, where the train stops for a few hours, we pass through Aranjuez, the beautiful summer-palace of the late queen; with its woods and magnificent vistas and lengthening avenues, full of lovely recesses and places of cool shade. At last we are in the heart of the kingdom.

Madrid, though not very large, is a brilliant city. Its prado where fashion saunters is beautifully laid out. It has a splendid museum, many churches, though none of them remarkable for beauty, and the vast palace of royalty, rich in furniture and objects of art. The houses and public buildings are lofty, the hotels many and excellent. Fountains spout in the open squares; crowds are buzzing through the streets or discussing at the cafés, for politics absorb the life in Madrid. The weather is treacherous, and many are carried off in a few hours by a pulmonia, for, as their proverb says, “The air of Madrid will not cause a leaf to flutter from the tree, but will kill a man.” Though the sky is clear and blue, and the sun shines out royally, a breeze comes down from the neighboring sierras, frost-laden, that pierces you through and through, and searches all your bones, and the very marrow in them; there is death in its breath. For all that, the Madrileños live a very gay life; retiring to rest generally at the small hours, and rising when they please. In the summer the city is empty, even the shopkeepers flit; for the heat is then intolerable, and they wander to San Sebastian or the south of France, or to their own watering-places, which are numerous and inferior to none.

As the train bears us further north, the scene ever varying grows more and more deserted. You close the curtains of the carriage to keep out the heat during the day, while at night you may wake amid frost and snow. The villagers and mountaineers crowd to the carriage windows at every station; old men, and dark-eyed boys, and graceful girls, with fruits and wines, and water, and milk. “Quien quiere agua? Agua fresca? Quien quiere leche? Agua como la nieve!”—“Who wants water—cool water? Who wants milk? Water cool as snow,” is the shrill cry from many throats on all sides. “Señorito, un quartito por el amor de Dios”—“A farthing, my dear little sir, for the love of God.” “Teno lastima de, un pobrescito, señorito mio, y Dios te lo pagara”—“Have pity on a poor little one, and God will repay thee,” snivels an old beggar in pitiful rags. If you listened to him for five minutes, he would treat you to a sermon on the evil of poverty and the eternal rewards of generosity, that would rival the most eloquent of preachers and charm the money out of your pockets.

Through the Pyrenees, the scenery grows wilder still and more picturesque; the construction of the railway here is a marvel of skill and enterprise. You are shot through tunnels bored through the solid rock, numbers of them of considerable length. You skirt dizzy precipices with scarce a straw between you and the dim hollows or ominous pools that sleep hundreds of feet below. Quaint little hamlets with quaint people are perched on mountain-tops or buried in pastoral nooks far away down. Tiny streamlets start out of the mountain and accompany you as you go. You can trace them as they tumble and fall, and lose themselves, and reappear with gathering volume and widening channel, till you cross them on a bridge lower down, and find them broad and powerful rivers, turning mills and humming onward to the sea. This is a great district for paper mills; you see them on every side. San Sebastian is up here, with its beautiful villas and pleasant strand at the foot of the mountain, skirted by a town increasing in wealth and importance every year. The favorite promenade is called the Paseo de las Conchas, “The Walk of the Shells,” a very beautiful one. It is becoming a very favorite and fashionable resort during the summer months; so much so that gamblers tried to obtain permission from the government to establish here the gambling-tables which have been banished from their own Baden Baden. Fine hotels are springing up, and there is no summer residence in Europe that would better repay a visit than this, uniting as it does the air of the sea and the mountains, where you may turn from the strand to the most pastoral of scenery, from the conventionalities of life to the rude simplicity of the Basque mountaineer.

This brings us to the frontier, and here we stop, with the consciousness of having thrown but a very fleeting glance over so vast a field, with its mines of historic wealth and troublous problems of to-day. Our object has been to display in their truer colors a people as little understood as it is studiously misrepresented by a host of writers, who forget that the pen is the handmaiden of truth.