ment.

Of course the highest type of civilization is English, and of course there is no army that can stand for a moment in face of an English army, and no soldier lived who could compare with the Duke of Wellington. This is not to be discussed. Everybody knows it, and I question if there could be any offense graver than to intimate to our English friend that perhaps he was mistaken; that there were other countries where an army was valiant, and men were honest, and women were fair; that there were nations who were unselfish and brave. The English traveler, who comes to Spain with his standards fixed, looks on this country as a sad place. Nothing pleases him. The cooks put too much garlic in the food, the very vintners do not know how to flavor their sherry. The men you meet on the streets carry knives. They are bandits, most of them, or would be if you were to meet them on some lonely pass in the Guadarama hills. They are all priest-ridden. If the truth were known they divide with the priest the results of each adventure. They will not work. Life consists of the bull ring, the café, the mass, and the lottery. They smoke cigarettes-foolish little futile cigarettes-which are smoked before you can grasp them. What can you think of a people who smoke cigarettes, when they could buy the old-fashioned clay pipes of England and have a genuine smoke? They drink thin wine, or preparations of almond and orange. How can a nation be great which will fool its time on these insipid washes and never know the luxury of a swig of good old honest English ale? They eat beans and cakes, and rarely have roast beef. This is the ultimate sign of decadence.

God forbid that I should raise a standard of comparison disparaging to England. I only think these standards should not be raised against Spain, or France, or the United Statesmore especially Spain-as English writers are doing almost without an exception. Coming once more to Spain, on my third journey, the memory of old impressions gathered from English books, and more particularly from Ford, comes back to me, and I know how unjust they are, and how my own experiences were at variance with those I gleaned from the books.

REVISITING SPAIN.

523 As to the politics of Spain, I could never see that any invasion ever did her good, and I do not see much difference between the invasions of the English and the French. It does not occur to me that Wellington came here as the savior of Spain

that he had any sentimental ideas on the subject. He came because England wanted to fight Napoleon, and because England always prefers to fight her battles in other countries than her own. A minister in Parliament can more easily explain the loss of ten thousand Spanish or Hessian allies in a battle than if they were ten thousand fellow countrymen and the nation throbbing over their loss. I hear that the French burned

some towns when they were in Spain. But England destroyed a Spanish fleet and sacked Badajoz, while we owe to France the saving of the Alhambra. To France we owe the opening of the Inquisition prisons, one of the most beneficent acts of modern times. I can see no interest that would be served by the destruction of French power in the Peninsula but the interests of England, and these only so far as it is believed that England only can be strong and free while other nations are weak and divided. I can see how, from a high political point of view, nothing would benefit Spain, Italy, and Portugal more than for them to form a close commercial alliance with France-a confederation if possible. They have many points of resemblance-in religion, the origin of language, and geographical relations. Such an alliance would infuse the whole mass with the wealth and the enterprise of France, and the Mediterranean might become once more the seat of empires as mighty as the empires of the past. But this might affect the route to India, the balance of power, the freedom of the seas, or some special British interest. Everything must be secondary to that. So long as British interests are safe it matters little what happens to Spain or how poor her people may be.

I look on Spain in a kindlier spirit, and although as you cross the frontier you see how all things change, and feel the instantaneous difference between Spain and France, I cannot help feeling that she was mighty in other days, and that within her borders lies the strength that may awake to the mastery of empires. On the one side of the boundary you leave the brisk, dapper French gendarme, all action and noise, the clean stations, trim with flowers, the eating tables where you can burden yourself with bonbons and champagne. On the other side you hear no noise. That everlasting French clatter has ceased. You do not see groups of gesticulating people all speaking at once. Things are not so clean. There is smoke everywhere -smoke in the saloons, in the eating rooms. You might find something to eat in the restaurant, but it would only be with your appetite in a normal condition. No one seems in a hurry. Groups in all conditions, some in cloaks, some in rags, stand

about smoking cigarettes and talking of politics and the bull fights. I wonder if this is a good sign, this talking politics. It is a new thing in Spain.

There were officers in high grade who awaited the coming of General Grant. They came directly from the king, who was

at Vittoria, some hours distant. Orders had been sent to receive our Ex-President as a captain general of the Spanish army. This question of how to receive an Ex-President of the United States has been the source of tribulation in most European cabinets, and its history may make an interesting chapter some day. Spain solved it by awarding the Ex-President the highest military honors.

More interesting by far than this was

the meeting with Mr. Castelar, the Ex-President of Spain. Mr. Castelar was in our train and on his way to San Sabastian. As soon as General Grant learned that he was among the group that gathered on the platform he sent word that he would like to know him. Mr. Castelar was presented to the General, and there was a brief and rapid conversation. The General thanked Mr. Castelar for all that he had done for the United States, for the many eloquent and noble words he had spoken for the North, and said he would have been very much disappointed to have visited Spain and not met him; that there was no man in Spain he was more anxious to meet. Castelar is still a young man. He has a large, domelike head, with an arching brow that recalls in its outline the brow of Shakespeare. He is under the average height, and his face has no covering but a thick, drooping mustache. You note the Andalusian type, swarthy, mobile, and glowing eyes that seem to burn with the sun of the Mediterranean. Castelar's Presidency was a tempest with Carlism in the north, and communism in the south, and the monarchy everywhere. How he held it was a marvel, for he had no friend in the family of nations but America, and that was a cold friendship. But he kept Spain free, and executed the laws and vindicated the national sovereignty, and set on foot by his incomparable eloquence the spirit which pervades Spain to-day, and which, sooner or later, will make itself an authority which even the cannon of General Pavis cannot challenge. It was a picture, not without instructive features, this of Castelar, the orator and Ex-President of Spain, conversing on the platform of the frontier railway station with Grant, the soldier and Ex-President of the United States. "When I reach Madrid," said the General, "I want to see you." "I will come at any time," said Castelar. The only man in Spain who received such a message from General Grant was Emilio Castelar.

The town

A slight rain was falling as we entered Vittoria. seems in a glow, and the open space in front of our hotel is filled with booths and dealers in grain and other merchandise. The traders sit over their heaps of beans, peppers, melons, and