THE PEOPLE OF SPAIN.
Sra—Some weeks back there appeared in the columns of your paper a eriticism on the Spanish nation, denying them the possession, if I recollect aright, of high qualities and great men, save in scant quantity. A " son of the country'.' has since in your pages established some claims for his land, but has not made out so good a case as he, might have done. I, being no " son of the country," may speak without prejudice. You give the Spaniards credit for high soldierly qualities, skilful and brave warriors where the leaders have been equal to the men, And this, be it remembered, is almost the only quality they have been permitted to exer- cise in the face of the world. They are assuredly not a nation, but stall a mere bundle of disunited provinces, as disunited as when mass after mass they won themselves back from the Moor : the very royal titles appended to every passport of navigation—" King of Navarre, Aragon' Castile," and so on to the tune of some fifty—tell the tale of the piecemeal' junction with- out union. And the reasons are plain. No one would deny the, English nation the possession of high qualities ; but imagine us placed in the condi- tion of Spam, with every shire and ecamV isolated by meentain ranges and the almost total absence of roads,—travelling, save to the rich, an impossi- tatty, and to the rich a heavy penance unless done with 'extrme leisure ; in addition to this, a superstition oppressing the wholeveliuntry as a libel on the Catholic faith, only saved from contempt by its cruelty, and utterly powerless for any good work ; absolute rulers, tribe in qualities from. Domitian to Messalina, with a base and effete tribe of courtiers and courte- sans to register their edicts ; with an unhealthy site for a capital, chesen in an insane freak of royalty ; with no trade but smuggling, and no manufac- turing but cigars, and that a royal monopoly; with bull-fights for the only exciting. amusement ; and with all this an intellect and an energy over struggling for occupation, but denied their legitimate vent ;reit all these things were the condition of England, and she became as a ,gonsequence a hell or a heptarchy, would it be a fair judgment to attribute the results to the moral obhquity of the people ?
There is no language more beautiful than the Spanish. The Roman tongue has not degenerated in Spanish keeping. "French for talking, Ita- lian for singing, and Castilian to address the Creator," so says the proverb. -The language of a people is the coinage of their, soul, their mind, the spon- taneous result of their organization, their style : give a base people a grand language to begin with, they infallibly bastardize it give the' commonest gibberish to a noble people, and they remould it, build it up into form and
"Mary the Maid of • lit. I once saw a Basque woman, a, graee and pro c ertion. The lingua grows noble even as the form grows lofty and inte the Inn," beautiful as a Greek statue—attempted—not tempted—with coin, by a loquacious Gaul. Piensas twgue soy Francesa ?—" Takest thou me for a Frankish woman ?" was her scornful response. An injured queen could not have exceeded her tone and manner. Yet mareellbus thin and small is the Spanish dictionary—excellent in quality, but alas for the quantity. And how should it be otherwise ? Where there are few things, words do not grow. The people are the same staple as of old ; the seed is there, but the blossom- ing and growing time comes not as yet. The'wonder really is, how these people have maintained their qualities ; why they have not gone into the condition of utter severe in pure despite at their baffled longings. Uncultivated, possessing nothing but their mother- wit, often have I marvelled at the excessive acuteness of• the general intel- lect of Spain. It is inferior to no nation that I know of, and superior to most. It is far deeper, more profound than the general intellect of France. The manly peasants of Castile, who seem all formed like Adam directly froni the dust of the earth, racy of their soil, yield the palm in industry to none, had •they but work to do. With good wines to drink at scarcely an cest,winea wherewith a man can if he likes intoxicate himself, instead of drowning himself as with the vin aigre of France,—they are yet proverbially sober, and they .sustain life on a minimum of food. They hoard their hard-earned 'coin to create capital as carefully as any Scot or Norseman: The CataLans work in their cotton-mills, and look as burly and businesslike—the masters—as Manchester men. The An- dalu chatters and loves not work, but he has the excuse of a hot climate.. But go North, to Galicia, Asturias, Leon, Biscay, and Gui- puecoa, and no honester or harder-working men are to be found. And there is no lack of material wealth in embryo of every kind. One thing only is lacking—transit—easy and cheap transit, to enable the people of North, South, East, and West, to know one another. This accomplished, the freedom of the Basques will spread throughout Spain.; the people will begin to know their strength ; acute intellect will perceive that free trade will constitute a wealthy nation, and the smuggling interest and influence will disappear. Spain will then rise again to be a maritime nation, and, united with Portugal, will grow to a grandeur greater than 'of old. If the Court and its minions and priests would keep Spain a tyranny, they should eschew railways of all things. Railways in Spain mean, if anything, the downfall of despotism ; and yet despotism will not check them, for money is to be had by jobbing in concessions and jobbing in shares ; and despotism, save perhaps in the case of Francis in Paraguay, was ever a spend- thrift,' ever a paivner of its means, a reckless, roystering debauchee, selling its birthright for a mess of pottage. And so the railways will go on somehow or other, and Spain will at last awake from her slumbers and find herself a nation.
And a nation in alliance with England. The Bay of Biscay will be the highway to our outlying wheat-lands. The genius of the Spanish people is akin to that of Englishmen and not of Frenchmen. There is a grave sober thought runs through their ebaracter, which will draw closer our connexion, and ultimately bring about intermarriages. Large ocean-steamers from Fal- mouth to Santander, warranted proof against sea-sickness, would give a healthy and pleasant sea-trip of little over thirty hours, and probably be preferred to the journey through France. In those days, Madnd will be a myth, and-the real capital of Spain—the port of her largest river—Lisbon, will be within a long day's journey from Santander.
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