The dark age of Spain waxes yet more gloomy. Weakness
claims the aid of cruelty, and the 'power of law is asserted by favour of lawless despotism. Spain s most remarkable men are banished by tens, because the Government is of a kind that cannot brook their presence. The rebel ZURBANO has been routed, but the man himself has disappeared from sight ; and so timorous is guilty conscience, so eager are _Ministers to clutch that able and unscrupulous foe, that there seems a real probability of Europe's witnessing a most extraordinary sight—the whole armies of Spain hunting down one man, who may escape them after all! Mean- while, his son and some other friends have been executed. The rebels were ordered to be shot, as bills of exchange are paid, at sight, but without any days' grace : the Captain-General of the district hesitated to put that murderous decree into execution, and suffered a party, including the wife and mother of the victim' to go to Madrid to crave mercy : the women saw the Queen and knelt at her feet, one fainting with grief, and even Queen CHRISTINA melting to tears : young Queen ISABELLA more like the bitter- melancholy FERDINAND than the too genial Italian Princess, shed no tear, but said that she would consult her Council: the young man was executed ; and the Captain-General ORIBE was dismissed for not playing provost-marshal. It is a strange problem working before our very eyes, to see whether a European country in the nineteenth century can completely sink into a mediwval barbarism, or whether the wrong will provoke a sudden remedy.
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