SPAIN AND THE SPANIARDS.* Tnaaw sketches of Biscay= scenery, the

Carlist war, and gener- ally of Spain and the. Spaniards, by one who. describes with great

vivacity and picturesqueness, have much interest, at .a time when what will, we trust, prove the last of those incendiary fires which Carlism has kindled, any time these forty years, in the North of. Spain, is being stamped out. " Azamut Batuk's " grand merit is that he takes his reader with him. It has been said of George IV., that he had heard. so much about Waterloo and reviewed so many; Waterloo. regiments,- that he.believed himself to have been present:

at the battle ; and having-read these sketches, we seem to realise the sensation of having actually. plodded with a Carlist column through the arid gorges of-Navarre, or looked out over the Plaza

in Madrid while a revolution was going on, and wondered at the absurdly practical genius of a people which. can do revolutions

with hardly a trace either of disturbance or of bloodshed. We have visited Spainin "Azamut Batuk's" company, and enjoyed our visit,—this is thubest thing we can say of the book. We have seen what he saw. Even when he is caricaturing, palpably carica- turing, we catch sight of the reality as it presented itself to his eyes, and perceive where the caricature begins. and ends.

It is the outsides of things he sees, but he sees the outsides vividly.

Once or twice he approaches the tartness of conventional satire, but he.never quite reaches it, and if he is too easy-minded to search questions to the. bottom, he is prevented. by the same quality from being cynically contemptuous or acridly. indignant. He cannot forbear- giving a slight touch of the whip to Mr.

Bradlaugh, but it is a very Might touch. He was, it seems, " struck by one or two rather happy thoughts of Mr. Bradlaugh's," at the- banquet which the simple Madrileilos gave to that " re-

presentative of the English people," when he came to congratulate

them. " The one—particularly interesting. to Englishmen—was that twenty years hence the Republic. of England would be re- ceiving the congratulations of the. Spanish Republic. The other —particularly interesting to Spaniards--was that.the Republicans. of Spain must not expect that their English brethren would lielp them with arms, but only with ideas."

Though a philosopher of the laughing, or at least smiling school, whose principle is not to be too earnest about. anything,.

"A.7ovnot Batuk" has two enthusiasms Of the one he is.conscious,.

of the other (we fancy) almost or altogether unconscious. The first.is for Spaniards, and no one can read six pages of his book withoutdiscovering it ; the second is for Englishmen, and it is only bylooking carefully into the generaltexture of his ideas that it can be discovered. His enthusiasm for Spain is on the surface, and its origin seems to lie in the harmony between his own light- hearted disposition and the free-and-easy satisfaction of the Spaniard with his. country, his condition, and things, in general.

The other and profounder enthusiasm which regulates " Azamat Batules" judgment of men and things is attested mainly by this,— that his. grand argument in defence of any Spanish quality or institution is that there is something as bad, or nearly as bad, in. England. In his heart of hearts he believes that this island is morally superior to any other part of the world. If he can pair off a Spanish fault with an English fault, he rubs bis hands in exultant glee, convineed that he has done all that can be, re- quired for the vindication of his client. Such reasoning has no sense or logic, unless it is based on the suppressed premiss that English morality; English, honour, and English usage furnish the touchstone of excellence for mankind.

Azamat Batuk?s" mode of argumentation, in referring all social questions to the measure of England, reaches. its . climax of absurdity in.his.discussion of Spanish bull-fights,. which is, in:our opinion, the most gravely. censurable passage in the book Admitting the cruelty of the entertainment to be horrible and heartrending, he tries to.palliate its worst details, its most.painful

• 'Spain and the Spaniards Brli. L. Thieblin, “-Azamat Bata." In 2 vols. London/ Hurat and Blackett- ISM accompaniments, by finding. something as bad, or nearly as bacla.k. in England.. Spanish children,. he cannot deny, turn away their- eyes from the revolting spectacle until they get accustomed to it

but he makes the assertion that, in: becoming accustomed.to,it„ they do not become "more cruel or hard-hearted." "If Whit& been so," he proceeds, "what should me then have to. say of ths, custom, so prevalent in another country, of sendinglittle children., to. the nearest corner public-house to fetch some beer or spirits; for the already half-drunken father or mother, and to lap. with, their tongue the froth of the malt liquor, at an age when they ought to have tasted nothing. but their mother's milky Is there-.

any moralising humbug on earth that would venture to assert that this latter practice is more edifying or more elevating. than the former?" We can hardly imagine that " Azamat Batuk," when the words " moralising. humbug " slipped from his pen, did not. know that . he was himself perpetrating a bit of humbug.. There is, of course, no man or woman in England, not even the drunken father. or mother sending the hapless child to. fetch the drink, who, if questioned on the matter when the drunken( fit has. passed, would sanction such a custom.. It is not merely the.drunken reprobate, who, in Spain, takes his child to bull-fights,. but persons of .every rank and of perfect respectability. "Azamat Batuk." is. not called upon to apologise for the. wretched Spanish woman,. who cannot leave her child in her hovel, and_therefore takes, it to a bull-fight. Her case suggests only pity and distress ; but he

either must be ignorant -of what logic means, or .he must, on con- sideration, perceive that his. reference to the habits. of the lowest

drunkards in. England has absolutely no application to the.easeof Spanish parents acquainted with " the noble courtesies of life." The serious persuasion that what Englishmen extensively indulge, in cannot be far wrong comes out in the following .sentences Among the children of the educated classes; the bull-fights do not produce anymore ravage than the sight of the Derby or the Univer- sity boat-race does. You can safely carry a Spanish boy every week. to. the Plaza de Toros,.without running. the riskof his.ever becoming a betting man, ,losing every farthing he could. lay his hand on, and finishing his career on the treadmill " If this; has any logical purport whatever, it must be that what is, by supposi- tion, not worse than an acknowledged English vice, may pass muster in Spain for. virtue. If ".Azamat Batuk" maintained, that both betting and bull-fighting are abominable practices, wet should agree with him, and if we happened to be particularly idle, might inquire which is the more abominable of the two.; but until.we meet with any other rational being who holds that. vice- in general is palliated because there is vice: in England, we shall. regard what he says on. the point as frivolous We never appreciated. the accuracy of the epithet " infernal," as- applied to a bull-fight, so well as we are enabled to do by "Azamat Batuk." The first time he saw. a 'fight, ,he "actually ran out of the- bull-ring." No wonder. " The sight of a horse. trot- ting. into its own :bowels hanging down to the ground is perfectly revolting. The intestines being put back. again, the skin stitched,. and the poor animal carried once more into the arena, under sufferings which. provoke evident- contortion..in. all the four legs,. or the sight of the expiring animal lying on.the.ground, and being charged over and over again by an infuriated bull, is horrible. Being unaccustomed to hear the horse < shriek with pain, we shudder when we. hear, for the first time, actual screams extorted from these noble and patient animals, by the insurmountable pain they are subjected to." Every veterinary surgeon and every cavalry officer who' has been in battle knows that it is only in the extremity of excruciating agony that the horse utters a cry. It is impossible to allege that the horse in such cases asthat specified by "Azamat Batuk" suffered for but a few minutes, inesmuch as the stitching and accompanying opera, tions must have 'taken time. What we have here, then, is one of the noblest of animals, which has lived- exclusively in the service of man, put to death by lingering. and inexpressible torments for man's amusement. If this is not devilish,. we know nothing that deserves the term- If. Spaniards make the God they worship in their own image—a thing as good as certain, for it has been all but universal among religionistse-they must believe thatdt would be worthy of the Divine Being, after a man has lived alife of perfect virtue and obedience, to torture himout of sheer will and pleasure. We can well. believe that the bull-fightis a result. of "the natural blood-thirstiness of the Moro-Iberian man," but how.. it should be " a most wholesome preventive" to the said bloodthirstiness is:not so plain, It seems that the Spaniard,." without the sight-of warm, steamingblood offered to him at least once a week, would draw it himself," for he waist have it at any price:" We should be sonty to find ourselves scut up to the belief that any European race is stall in ;so low a stage of savagery as this seems to prove of Spaniards, but as " .Azamat Batuk " neverdires of eulogising.the in-. -:habitants of the Peninsula, we cannot help fearing that they may be as bad as he says. " It must not be forgotten," he adds, ." that hull-fights are the remnants of ancient religious sacrifice, and that in the detail of them you can still pretty clearly trace certain features to the ancient holocaust, others to the gladiators." This is extremely probable ; and if the essential Paganism of delight in the contemplation of pain could be exhibited in a form still more vile than that of gloating over the pangs of men, it would be that of satisfaction in the agonies of helpless and innocent brutes. It seems positively incredible that any writer should depict the horrors and atrocities of the bull-ring as they are depicted in these pages, and yet attempt to apologise for them.

On behalf of the Spaniards, " Azamat Batuk " declares that they -are hospitable, courteous, affectionate in their families, content with their country and themselves, sober, sagacious, not greedy - of filthy lucre. Of the high estimate they form of their country there can be no doubt,—they have a saying that if God were not king in Heaven he would be king in Spain, and have a French king for cook. That they are not avaricious is not-so certain,— their advocate is fain to confess that " money can do anything in Spanish politics." That they do not work with the feverish intensity of English money-makers might be meritorious, if we could believe their cultivation of repose to have a better motive than indolence. The notion at which we arrive by the process of carefully recollecting " Azamat Batuk's " facts, and carefully forgetting his inferences from them, is that Spaniards have good qualities and better capabilities, but that they exhibit an antique,—not uninteresting or unmitigatedly bad,—yet, on the whole, obsolete and vicious type of national pride, exclusiveness, and selfishness. Spaniards are kind to each other, but they are not kind to foreigners. They were glad to entertain " Azamat Batuk," but his company, we have no doubt, was more than worth his room. Their conduct to Amadeo was morosely, selfishly unkind. They had asked the Italian to come to reign over-them, and it was indecently spiteful and mean to make life wretched to him and his Queen by studied insults. Of no country in Europe except Spain can it, we presume, be said that a foreigner, civilly asking the way in it, is not sure of an obliging reply. We regard it as not impossible that a new era is beginning to dawn upon Spain. There is great capacity latent in the people ; it is something considerable to have produced such an orator as Castelar, and such a practical politician as Figueras. " .A2amat Batuk" holds that Carlism and Alfonsism will both succumb to a firmly established Republic, and he shows that a Federal Republic in Spain is neither the impracticable nor the alarming thing some have imagined it to be. His book is one of the most amusing of its class we have ever seen, and everything is instructive in it except its social and ethical judgments. " Azamat Battik " does not prove his enthusiasm for Spain to be reasonable, but the presence of that enthusiasm in his book decidedly brightens it. In Spain there are no brooks and no singing-birds, in, Spaniards there is (except among themselves) no cordial sociability, no sprightliness ; but these considerations are of quite too _little importance to check the ardours of that " eternal, pro- found love " which, he tells us, he will guard for his " dear Spain." Perhaps, after all, if we went to Spain, we should-take to the country and the people as well as " Azamat Batuk." The really bewitching woman is not the one whose merits and charms you -can catalogue,- who has no waywardness, no wild and piquant brilliancy, •who faultlessly suoldes fools and chronicles small-beer. There are persons who ought, on account of the equalities you can expressly name in them, to be highly objectionable, but who are fascinating. It may be so in the case of Spain, but the simple -truth is that, whenever " Azamat Batuk" ceases praising and begins stating facts, he says something that tells against the land and the-people he adores.