WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.*

HERE is the ideal book of travel in Spain ; the book which exactly anticipates the requirements of everybody who is for- tunate enough to be going to that enchanted land ; the book which ably consoles those who are not so happy, by supplying the imagination from the daintiest and most delicious of its stores. The introduction even is rich in pictures, and in historical and romantic reminders, and conveys a clear practical lesson in what to see and how to see it, if one wants to make not a " comfort- able," but a real tour in Spain. The book seizes upon one's mind with a fascination like that of the Far East, with its mingled delight in grand nature, and its subtle, distant human sympathy with a past and a present, quite unlike the past and present of our own race and country.

The book forces the isolation, the poetry, the pervading tradi- tion, the pictorial stateliness of Spain upon one with a power which puts one into the mental attitude in which only each a tour can be thoroughly enjoyed, the true holiday attitude, not philo- sophical, or political, not busy, hurried, censorious, exacting, ana- lytical, or critical, but simply seeing, enjoying, musing, acquies- cent. Surely a place in which to forget care and work, and yet to have the memory charged and stimulated, is that vast country whose physical features are as distinct from those of other Euro- pean lands as its people and their history. It is not beautiful, in any sense which implies refinement, verdure, or colour ; but the author tells how one mast exult " in the long lines, in the un- broken expanses of the stony, treeless, desolate sierras, while every crevice of the distant hills is distinctly visible in the trans- parent atmosphere, and the shadows of the clouds fall blue upon the pale yellow of the tawny desert ; " how one watches for the pictorial effect of the long trains of males with their drivers in flowing mantas, bearing merchandise from one town to another, across the brown plains, whereon there dwells a silence almost ghastly, broken by no song of birds or chirp of insects. And then the cities, with their tortuous whitewashed streets, their colossal churches, their vast brown palaces—the cities which seem to have gone to sleep for five hun- dred years and to have scarcely woke again, " where you step at once out of the reign of Amadeo into that of Philip II., and find the buildings, the costumes, the proverbs, the habits, the daily life, those of his time. You wonder what Spain has been doing since, and the answer is quite easy,—nothing. It has not the slightest wish to do anything more ; it is quite satisfied." What a country to go to from this, indeed, from any other, and realise a holiday in. To be sure there's a civil war lurking about in wild quarters of it, and the chronic state of Madrid is revolutionary ; but it does not matter to the people, and it does not disturb the traveller, who possibly agrees with the calm, highly-bred Spaniards, out of Madrid, that "the Italian" did rather an ungentlemanly sort of thing in coming there, but that it is of no particular moment. If one cannot put one's working-day mind in a sling, be oblivious of notions of progress and plans of reform, above all, if one cannot lay aside every remembrance sad association of religious controvert' as between Catholicism and Protestantism, the essence of the pleasure of a tour of Spain will inevitably escape, and be lost. Question, contention, comparison, dissent, all or any of these will spoil the effect of the scene, and injure one's appreciation of the people. Nowhere in the world is the ancient Catholic tradition so vital, so all-pervading. It lives, not only in the architecture, in the art, in the institutions of Spain, but in the habits of life, in the forms of speech, in the pro- verbial and common phrases, in every incident and trait of the every- day life of the people. The traveller who ignores this loses the motive of the harmony, the meaning of the pictnre,—and the traveller who cannot get over his prejudices on this point had better not cross the border.between France and Spain, at which Spanish cus- toms come immediately into play. The street and cradle songs are all

* Wanderings in Spain. By Augustus J. C. Hare. London: Stratum and 0o.

legends of the Sacred Infancy (some, especially the Noche Buena, exceedingly beautiful) ; the women washing at the public foun- tains sing, in parts, verses which tell the joys and sorrows of the

" Santisima ;" the owl is honoured because be witnessed the Crucifixion, and ever since has cried, in a terror-stricken voice, " Cruz, cruz !" the evergreens bear their leaves all the year round because they sheltered the Mother and the Child during their flight into Egypt. Every natural object, like every work of art, has its association with the ancient faith, on the side of the imagination, and these associations are kept constantly in sight ; these "conceits" are as living as the creed. Such hideous out- rages as the destruction of the monastery at Poblet, such whole- sale proceedings as the general disestablishment of religious houses in Spain, have not affected the people. The ruffianly rioters who did the one, and the Constitutional Ministers who decreed the other, were equally " accidents" in their estimation. Sometimes this pervading presence of the Catholic faith is very ludicrously illustrated, and as Mr. Hare is quite

as happy in his pictures of the humorous as of the poetic side of the national character, we come to know it all round. In the train, between Tarragona and Valencia he heard a woman remark to another that her baby was smiling in its sleep. The mother answered,—as an Irish peasant would have replied,—" Yes, it is laughing at the angels, which it only can see." " I have such a

buzzing in my ears," said an old woman to another. " It is the sound of a leaf," she answered, "falling from the Tree of Life." He drove from Alicante to Elche (the Roman Ilica, but com- pletely Moorish in character, where the glorious palm grooves are), over the vast breezy plains. The old Arragonese coachman wore a decorated velveteen suit, and a large sombrero, and thus courteously

addressed his horses, who were not driven at all, but who merely hear and obey :—" To the right ; to the left ; go on, you creatures ;

Ave Maria Purisima, more to the left, you first one ; go along with God, you outsider." Here is one little bit of description,—it is difficult to select among the number :-

" After two hours' drive, a serrated line of palms rose upon the hori- zon, and soon we entered their forests. Far in the air, sometimes sixty feet high, rose the beautiful fans, with their enormous pendent branches of dates, the golden fruit hanging from stems of so gorgeous an orange that no mere description of colour can give the faintest idea of their effect when they are lighted up by the sun and backed by a deep blue sky. Their variety also is most beautiful, some of the older trees growing perfectly straight, others bending in the most picturesque attitudes, some buttressed with little stone walls, and beside them younger palms rising in youthful vigour, tens upon tens of thousands,

for miles around By the road side, before every cottage door, are quantities of dates in baskets, no one watching them, any passer-by can cut as many as he likes, fill his pockets, and leave his halfpenny in payment. It is generally left, for where Spaniards are trusted they hardly ever abuse a trust."

There are many charming storiesof the famous Spanish beggars,— a traveller's character may be divined by the tone in which he writes of the Continental beggars,—this is perhaps the best - "In the Collegiate of Santa Ana (1146) there is a lovely silent Gothic cloister, filled with grand old orange trees. Here authorised and highly respectable old beggers sit all day long upon chairs, on the chance of a stray cuarto. 'Pardon me, my sister, does not your worship see that I am drawing ?' I said to one of them, who had hobbled away from her throne to beg. Ah, Dios!' she answered. ' Blind that I was ! worm that I am! So your worship draws. And I—I too am a lover of the arts.' Ever after we were the best of friends, and as I came to the cloister of a morning I received the friendliest of nods from my art- loving sister, who never dreamt of begging again."

The mistrust that is a necessary habit in Italy may be laid aside on entering Spain, which is in itself an element of enjoyment of no small account.

"Cheating and extortion," says the author, "are incompatible with the Spanish character, and all are most anxious and willing to help strangers. The temporal works of mercy—to give bread to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, to take care of the sick, to visit the captives, and to bury the dead,—these are the common duties which none shrink from. The mistress of our posada at Elche—equivalent to a small public-house—distributes viands daily to a number of maimed, halt, and blind, and keeps two lamps burning nightly at her own expense before the little shrine of Our Lady of the Unprotected' in her balcony. As I write, a handsome, dark-eyed brown boy in rags, who looks as if he had stepped out of one of Mnrillo's pictures, is leaning against the opposite wall in the moon- light, watching a shrine of the Virgin. It is a picture typical of Spain, ruined and superstitions, but still most beautiful; and so is the cry of the watchman, which is ringing through the silent air, 'Ave Maria Santisima, it is a quarter to twelve o'clock.'"

In this least common-place, and yet most comprehensive of works of travel, we find everything we have previously learned of that comparatively unworked mine of history, art, poetry, and nature, Spain, as well as a great deal which is entirely novel. But the old is placed in a dazzling light of fancy, association, and suggestion, and the new is captivating.

The skies of Spain shine, the wide-sweeping breezes blow, the solemn church music swells, the ancient grandeur, gravity, and' dignity of the history and the life of the country, the old' Moorish magnificence, the splendid chivalry, the religious en- thusiasm, the stern loyalty and narrow pride of the races of Arragon and Castille, all live again in the vivid pages of this book. The chapters on Seville, Toledo, and Granada are of the- utmost interest in matter and grace of manner, and the fascina- tion of the great city of the Moors is so.eonveyed that it explains a story told in the Introduction, about some ladies, known to the author, who, long before railways were made in Spain, determined to reach Granada from Malaga, though it was only possible to' pass one day there. Day and night they rode on, with ever- growing fatigue. At last, on the summit of a desolate mountain, their strength failed, and they felt they could go no farther_ But just then, a solitary traveller approached from the other side, of the pass ; the pass was so narrow, so hemmed in with precipices, that it was impossible to linger. There was no time for many- words, but as the stranger passed, he exclaimed, " Go on, go on ; it is alike the Paradise of Nature and of Art ;" and they took courage and went on, " and found it, as so many thousands of travellers have done since, the moat perfectly beautiful place in the world."