FOUR DAYS IN SPAIN.
(nom A CORRESPONDENT.]
As every one knows, the northern border of Spain, near San Sebastian, is the quarter by which the Duke of Wellington crossed from France into Spain, having fought his way from Lisbon, and so delivered the country. But I am sorry to say the instinctive wish of even an English visitor is that he had left the attempt alone. The late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, among his many bold uubeliefs, disbelieved in the Peninsular War. Ile held that England might have done more by helping the Germans, who did conquer Napoleon, than by aiding the Spaniards, who ran away from him ; he thought that the Duke of Wellington at Leipsic would have been more useful than the Duke of Wellington at Vittoria. But whatever might have been the fate of Europe, and whether this bold doubt be wise or not, every traveller that crosses from France into Spain must be permitted to wish that the French had been allowed to keep the country and to clear it up. They did this, as we all know, in North Italy. That country should acknowledge its great obligations to the First Napoleon, and like to think that he was an Italian really and after all, though he had French under him. An immense material improve- ment in North Italy began in his time. This is what Spain now wants. When you cross the border you go back two cen- turies in the civilization of travelling. To go no further than the Custom House. Every one knows how easy and how skilful a French douane is. When I came back from Spain, I merely told the French official that I had nothing "to declare," and he at once chalked my boxes with a cross, and without more ado they went into France. But when I entered Spain I had to wait in the hot, close room half an hour before the Spaniard would begin to examine my things (be had nothing to do, and enjoyed it very much); then he would open everything, and look at everything ; and what was worse, the plan of the chalk cross to show what had been looked at was not known to him, so he was always in doubt what he had examined and what he had not. Luckily, I suspected him, and though be had once gone over all the boxes, and seen them closed again, I fancied he might get muddled again, so I returned upon him from the carriage, and sure enough found him fumbling with the largest portmanteau, saying it had never been opened, and wanting to examine it again. I fancy he wanted a fee ; but being fresh in the country I did not directly think of it, and then I did not know which man to buy, and feared that if I gave a little official one franc I should have also to give a larger one five.
Everything is managed in the same way. The railways, it is true, which were made by English engineers, are very good, though there is only a single line, and the carriages are comfort- able. But many of them were bought in England and not paid for. I know a once thriving carriagebuilder in the City who was ruined by making carriages for one of these Spanish lines.. He thought it was a capital transaction, for the price was high. But the Company paid him with "a very long bill,' which he discounted with a finance company. But when the bill became due the Spanish Railway could not pay it, and the Finance Company was breaking up, so that the bill came back on my friend, and he had to go through the Bankruptcy Court. Still, unless a traveller had been behind the scenes a little in such matters, he might like the Spanish railways. But what he would not like are Spanish smells. Everything, I suppose, must have a refuga somewhere, and Spain may be the asylum for fugitive stenches from the rest of the world. There is a little place called "Iran," where I slept ; it has been burnt down continually ; armies having often gone this way and burnt it, — so one would imagine it would be built in modern fashion and drained in modern ways.. Not at all ; whenever a house was burnt down the owner rebuilt it where it used to stand, so that streets built thirty years are as narrow as they were in the thirteenth century. The idea the place. gives you by the nose is that you are walking in the drains, and that the streets must be somewhere else. Or, only to travel as far as the very next town, we have all been taught to exclaim, after the poet, "Oh for a blast of that dread horn on Fontarabian echoes borne!" But if you now go to Fontarabia itself, you will find your poetical illusions disturbed. As a Spanish gentleman told me, it was a place of great renown in the middle ages, but seeing it once is enough. No doubt it is picturesquely placed upon the summit of a gentle knoll, and at a distance looks well. But there is no life inside. The houses are good, even still, and once must have been fine, but there is plainly no use for them, for no one lives there. The city is quietly, gently mouldering away, just as an old fish day by day decays on the sea shore—always in the same shape, and always with the same bad smell.
If, therefore, the Spanish Revolution should be successful, I hope the new Government will make soap and water standing orders, and good deep drainage a fundamental article of the next constitution. France is not in all respects a clean country ; no doubt, England is the place where men wash most and best. But as compared with Spain, France is exquisitel'y clean ; if the French could only have kept Spain a few years, possibly they might have taught her more elementary lessons in civilization, which experience shows are so difficult for a nation to learn, but which once learned are sure to stick, because their daily use helps so much. I am not able to tell you from personal intercourse with. Spaniards whether or not they are sufficiently grateful to the English for their deliverance. From others I have heard that the French, who wanted to enslave the country, are more popular than the English who helped to free it. But I know that at San Sebastian. the local guide-book gives a dreadful account of its capture by the English and Portuguese under Lord Lynedoch The "Guide Album " is silent as to any calamities, during their stay, inflicted by the French, but is copious, on the horrors of the deliverance. I wish we had left it alone.
The linguistic isolation of Spain is complete. French, though it claims to be European, hardly laps over this border of France. At the best hotel in San Sebastian only one person could speak French, and with the rest I could only communicate by means of a Spanish vocabulary, pronounced according to the light of nature, and by means of the primitive gesture language, of which, if you use it without shame, and if you really want things, more may be made than is imagined. I went about with two fingers extended when I wanted two things, and three fingers if I wanted three things, and so by primitive barbarism attained my wishes. Even in books the transition is great. You can hardly buy a French book on the Spanish side of Heudaya. At Vittoria I could not buy one, though I wanted something to read in the midday heat. As for our English books, you might as well have asked for "some-
thing nice" in Icelandic. Near as they are to the frontier, the inhabitants of Guipuzcoa can clearly learn no foreign ideas by reading foreign books.
The wretched Government is the more teasing because the country itself is so charming. This north-west corner of Spain is the only place out of England where I should like to live. It is a sort of better Devonshire ; the coast is of the same kind ; the sun is more brilliant, the sea is more brilliant, and there are mountains in the background. I have seen some more beautiful places and many grander, but I should not like to live in them. As Mr. Emerson puts it, I do not "want to go to heaven before my time ;" my English nature, by early use and long habit, is tied to a certain kind of scenery, soon feels the want of it, aud is apt to be alarmed as well as pleased at perpetual snows and all sorts of similar beauties. But here, about San Sebastian, you have the best England can give you (at least if you hold, as I do, that Devonshire is the finest of our counties), and the charm, the ineffable, indescribable charm, of the South, too. Probably the sun has some secret effect on the nervous system that wins one's impartiality, and makes one inclined to be pleased ; but the golden light lies upon everything, and one fancies one is charmed only by the outward loveliness. As you row over the harbour of Passages you can fancy you are at Dartmouth, were it not for the Basque talk of the girls who row you and the wonderful light which quivers on the waves. You have just the same toy of a harbour, only more complicated, for Passages has three little harbours stuck together, but all coming to nothing, as a modern sailor would speak. And the Pyrenees behind have very much the old North Devon look, only that they are so much larger, and have so much more colour and glow.
The bad state of the country is clearly not due to an inherent defect in the inhabitants. They are just the same race as over the French border, where everything is so comfortable and travel- ling so easy. It is as much trouble to go the little way from San Sebastian to Biarritz, as it is to go the long way from Biarritz to Paris ; at every conceivable minute the " administration " find occasion to bother you.
The French Government is not perfection, but at least it does what it intends, and it never mistakes by stupidity or by idleness. And it has taught its Basque subjects the same lesson. No doubt the Basque-descended races of the Pyrenees are not equal to the Parisians in alertness or in accuracy. They do not possess that similarity in external finish to the ancient French which Mr. Arnold justly ascribes to the Northern French. Still the Basques who have been trained by the French have some habits of business, they are tolerably efficient and reasonably exact, but the Basques governed by Spaniards possess no such qualities. The Spaniards could teach their subjects little of business qualities, for it is in these merits that they are themselves wanting.
In spite of many minor troubles a passing traveller of intelli- gence will always, I think, feel a kindness for the Basque race. It is not only that they are the oldest race in Europe ; their very language is so old as to be akin to nothing else in Europe ; indeed, I believe, as far as is known, to nothing now extant anywhere ; probably long before Celt or German was known, the Basques held possession of Western Europe, at least, if it can be called possession to live in the villages and scanty forest hamlets, in fear of beasts, men, and gods. The first primitive race who crawled into marshy Europe were these Basques, as far as we know, and therefore alone one would respect them. But they do not need so out-of-the-way an argument ; they appeal to a modern prejudice, which is better than an ancient history,—they are exceedingly good-looking. You will see more pretty girls between Biarritz and St. Sebastian than between Bordeaux and Paris ; they have something the look of Devonshire women, only with more brilliancy and more meaning ; and the men, though small and rather slight, have also good features and a good expression. There is an old saying, "There are some races with which Nature flirts, and some races whom she marries." Athens, I believe, was the
type of the "nice young person" to whom history long paid attention, but to whom in the end she did not " behave well ;" and
Rome, again, was the type of the rigid " satisfactory " lady, who in the end appeared at the altar. Whatever truth there be in this theory, fits a little, I think, the case of the Basques. I dare say they are inferior to the German and the Celt in the solid, bread- winning qualities, and therefore they have gone down in the struggle of nations, and keep but a small corner of all their old territories. Their good looks plead with those who see them, but there is no denying the verdict of events. The best horse is the one who wins most races ; the most solid nation is the nation that gains and lasts, if we follow history patiently. Every traveller knows why the ugly Parisiau won, why the pretty Basque I failed.
As I have said, I have nothing to tell of this revolution. When I began to write I did not know that Queen Isabella had crossed the frontier. But of one thing I ant certain : the disease of Spain is far too deep to be cured by a mere change of dynasty or form of ; government. You want a revolution in the executive habits of government. You want something which could touch the common social existence and daily habits of the people. In France the first revolution touched everybody, and you cannot travel a yard in France without finding its vestige. Since then, the changes, though great and sharp, were simply political, but in 1789 they were radi- cal and social. You have to make Spain a modern country with an effective executive ; it is now an old-fashioned country, with an ineffective executive. How it can be done I have no idea ; but such is the problem. At Gavarnce, the great cirque of the Pyrenees, which was once, like all cirques, a lake, but from which the water has been gone some ages, the natives say that the Administration thinks of "putting back the lake !" Only a French administration would dream of putting back a lake ; still, every one knows that, being French, it could if it would. When Spain possesses an administration in whose vigour and whose science Europe has equal confidence, Spanish revolutions will have achieved the task which, under vast encumbrance, they are
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