CASTILIAN DAYS.*
THERE could be little doubt that the author of the volume of poems that contains, amongst others, the Pike County Ballads, would describe with spirit and originality his impressions of any country or people that fell under his observation. And accord- ingly we have a most attractive volume, in which Colonel Hay writes easily and picturesquely of the cities, streets, and buildings, and of the history, politics, and domestic life and character of the inhabitants of that unique, old-fashioned country, the Peninsula, par excellence, of the European continent. He has been a thought- ful student of its history, and has, we gather, an intimate know- ledge of its language, and he brings these special and great general powers to bear on the consideration, in the concluding chapters, of its disturbed political life. He argues that the revolution failed to establish a monarchy, but he wrote two years ago, and was a little premature ; and it is even yet too soon to say that the promises of the constitution may not yet be fulfilled, clearly as Colonel Hay points out the failure of many of them at the date of his Spanish papers. He bears strong testimony, personal as well as from history, to the honesty of the Spaniard as distinguished from his truthfulness, but to the utter absence of this latter quality— which he attributes to (so-called) religious training, and of which he gives some startling instances—he traces the failure of consti- tutional government. Till the people can believe their represen- tatives, and the representatives their ministers, the stability and order of good government are impossible. Enlightenment is the first step to independence and truthfulness, and this, Colonel Hay argues, will spread more quickly, however perfect the constitu- tion, under a republican, than under a monarchical form of government. The historical parts of his book are a resume of the history of united " Crown and Gown " power, and its crushing effects on the intellectual and moral life of the people. On the whole, however, we value the book before us more for its descrip- tions than for its political views, for though the author's conclusions are full of sagacity, he writes wholly from the republican point of view, and the somewhat boastful compla- cency of the American is often apparent, though tempered by the cosmopolitanism the traveller and the refinement of the gentle- man. Another characteristic which somewhat mars the beauty of the book is the too frequent ridicule of the Roman Catholic. We do not complain, of course, when our author argues seriously that many of the troubles of harassed Spain are distinctly traceable to the power of the priests and the credulity of the people. What we object to is the holding this credulity up to ridicule, and speak- Castiti4n lint. By John Hay. Loudon: Trlibuer and Co. 1871. ing with a lightness which is unnecessary and unchristian of beliefs and prejudices held sacred by a whole people. The tone of this ridicule is, too, a trifle vulgar ; witness Colonel Hay's de- scription of the visit of the Virgin to the Bishop Ildefonso, with which he interupts his account of the magnificent cathe- dral at Toledo, and which ends by telling us that to this day the aged verger of the cathedral never passes the chapel where it took place " without sticking in his thumb and pulling out a blessing." And here again, a page or two further on—and this time also in speaking of the Catholics,—" I looked out, and saw a group of brown and ragged women, each with an armful of baby, diseussing the news from Madrid. The Protestants, they said, had begun to steal Catholic children." This same tendency to see, and temptation to present, the rather coarsely humorous in the circumstances that come under his notice not unfrequently destroys the beauty and power of his descriptions, disturbing the train of thought he has suggested by the jarring of an incongruous element. Thus he leaves the description of a field-night in the Cortes to remark on the " polished skulls " of the members, and in another place he spoils a grave passage thus :—" Yet the monarchy is no more consoli- dated than it was when the triumvirs laid their bald heads together at Alcolea." In speaking of " the cradle of Cervantes," he says of the church in which he was baptized, " It is a pretty church, not large or imposing, just the thing to baptize a nice
baby in." And in explaining the absence of Judas from the miracle-play, he breaks in upon our sympathy with the warm-
hearted and hot-blooded Spaniard who cannot endure even a representative of the betrayer of our Lord, by the offensive quota- tion from Artemus Ward of what happened to his wax Judas.
The book is of such various interest that it seems unreasonable to wish for more, and perhaps Colonel Hay thought that travellers had already worn threadbare the subject of Spanish scenery, or holds that such descriptions are idle and unsatisfactory. But we are disappointed, nevertheless, by their absence, for both his poems
and his city interiors betray his delicate touch, and his power not merely of conjuring up for us the scene present to his own eye, but of rousing the sentiment that it would naturally excite. Here, for instance, are the few last words about Segovia, and we feel both the brightness and the desolation :—
" But though enriched by all these legacies of an immemorial past, there seems no hope, no future for Segovia. It is as dead as the cities of the Plain. Its spindles have rusted into silence. Its gay company is gone. Its streets are too large for the population, and yet they swarm with beggars. I had often heard it compared in outline to a ship,—the sunrise astern and the prow pointing westward,—and as we drove away that day and I looked back to the receding town, it seemed to me like a grand bulk of some richly laden galleon, aground on the rock that holds it, alone, abandoned to its fate among the barren billows of the tumbling ridget, its crew tired out with struggling and apathetic in despair, mocked by the finest air and the clearest sunshine that ever shone, and gazing always forward to the new world and the new times hidden in the rosy sunset, which they shall never see."
And here is an extract from the interesting chapter on Cervantes :— " I went to /timid, one summer day, when the bare fields were brown and dry in their after-harvest nudity, and the hills that bordered the winding Henares were drab in the light and purple in the shadow. From a distance the town is one of the most imposing in Castile. It lies in the midst of a vast plain by the green water-aide, and the land approach is fortified by a most impressive wall emphasized by sturdy square towers and flanking bastions. But as you come nearer you see this wall is a tradition. It is almost in ruins. The crenellated towers are good for nothing but to sketch. A short walk from the station brings you to the gate, which is well defended by a gang of picturesque beggars, who are old enough to have at for Murillo, and revoltingly pitiable enough to be millionnaires by this time, if Castilians had the cowardly habit of sponging out disagreeable impressions with pennies. At the first charge we rushed in panic into a tobacco shop and filled our pockets with maravedis, and thereafter faced the ragged battalion with calm. It is a fine, handsome, and terribly lonesome town. Its streets are wide, well built, and silent as avenues in a graveyard. On every hand there are tall and stately churches, a few palaces, and some two dozen great monasteries turning their long walls, pierced with jealous grated windows, to the grass-grown streets. In many quarters there is no sign of life, no human habitations among these morose and now empty barracks of a monkish army The town has not changed in the least. It has only shrunk a little. You think some-. times it must be a vacation, and that you will come again when people return. The little you see of the people is very attractive. Passing along the desolate streets, you glance in at an open door and see a most delightful cabinet picture of domestic life. All the doors in the house are open. You can see through the entry, the front room, into the cool court beyond, gay with oleanders and vines, where a group of women half dressed are sewing and spinning and cheering their souls with gossip. If you enter under pretence of asking a question, you will be received with grave courtesy, your doubts solved, and they will bid you go with God, with the quaint frankness of patriarchal times. They do not seem to have been spoiled by over-much travel. Such impressive and Oriental courtesy could not have survived the trampling feet of the great army of tourists. On our pilgrim-way to the cradle of Cervantes we came suddenly upon the superb façade of the University."
Here and there, indeed, is a touch of the guide-book, in passages like these :—" A flight of veined marble steps leads to the beauti- ful retable of the high altar. The screen, over ninety feet high,
cost the Milanese Trezzo seven years of labour. The pictures illus- trative of the life of our Lord are by Tibajdi and Zuccaro. The gilt
bronze tabernacle of Trezzo and Herrera, which has been likened with the doors of the Baptistery of Florence as worthy to figure in the architecture of heaven, no longer exists," and so on. But this is sometimes difficult to avoid and can easily be forgiven, as can
also the possibly too minute; though enticing account of the pic- tures in the museum of Madrid. The history of their collection is
curious and interesting, and the details ought to send many a lover
of art to Madrid who never thought to go there. Only think of two thousand pictures all worthy of their place !—of forty-six Murillos, sixty-five Velazquez, forty-three Titians, ten Raphaels, &c. "There is," says Colonel Hay, "in this glorious temple enough to fill the least enthusiastic lover of art with delight and adoration for weeks and months together. If one knew that he was to be blind in a year, like the young musician in Auerbach's exquisite romance, I know of no place in the world where he could garner up so precious a store of memories for the days of darkness, memories that would haunt the soul with so divine a light of con- solation, as in that graceful Palace of the Prado."
In the chapter called " A Field-night in the Cortes " we have very vivid pictures not only of the tout ensemble and of the customs of the House, and behaviour and bearing of the members, but of the more prominent celebrities; and especially of Marshal Prim, Admiral Topete, and Don Rivero ; and still more especially of the idol of our author, Emilio Castelar, the young radical republican, the leading and marvellous orator of the Spanish Left. But for all these and for all else we must refer our readers to the book. The opening chapters, which treat of the sentiment of home—so marked a characteristic of the Spaniard—and of the influence of tradition, at once forcibly claim our attention ; and Colonel Hay carries us from Madrid to Segovia, Toledo, and Alcabi de Henares, increasing our interest by admira- tion for the venerable, silent, almost deserted cities of bright sun- shine and deep cool shade, and illustrating all from the stores of his historical research. Finally, he takes us to the cradle and grave of Cervantes, and tells us some things that are new and nothing that is not interesting about that greatest of Spaniards, before he turns to the Cortes and launches into politics. His chapter on the miracle-play, though it begins in a spirit of derision, ends in enthusiasm, like the visits to Ammergau of many a sceptic of its power. And that on Spanish proverbs is curious. The only chapter we could well spare—though that too illustrates the cre- dulity of this child-like people—is the one on spirit-rapping. We must conclude with a wish that we could have read this book a year or so before it was commenced, that we might have realized, far better than we did do, the story of Spain's difficulties and successes.
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