Chapter II: Preface

TO THE
FIRST EDITION.

Some of the following Letters have been printed in the New Monthly Magazine.

The Author would, indeed, be inclined to commit the whole collection to the candour of his readers without a prefatory address, were it not that the plan of his Work absolutely requires some explanation.

The slight mixture of fiction which these Letters contain, might raise a doubt whether the sketches of Spanish manners, customs, and opinions, by means of which the Author has endeavoured to pourtray the moral state of his country at a period immediately preceding, and in part coincident with the French invasion, may not be exaggerated by fancy, and coloured with a view to mere effect.

It is chiefly on this account that the Author deems it necessary to assure the Public of the reality of every circumstance mentioned in his book, except the name of _Leucadio Doblado_. These Letters are in effect the faithful memoirs of a real Spanish clergyman, as far as his character and the events of his life can illustrate the state of the country which gave him birth.

_Doblado’s_ Letters are dated from Spain, and, to preserve consistency, the Author is supposed to have returned thither after a residence of some years in England. This is another fictitious circumstance. Since the moment when the person disguised under the above name left that beloved country, whose religious intolerance has embittered his life--that country which, boasting, at this moment, of a _free_ constitution, still continues to deprive her children of the right to worship God according to their own conscience--he has not for a day quitted England, the land of his ancestors, and now the country of his choice and adoption.

It is not, however, from pique or resentment that the Author has dwelt so long and so warmly upon the painful and disgusting picture of Spanish bigotry. Spain, “with all her faults,” is still and shall ever be the object of his love. But since no man, within the limits of her territory, can venture to lay open the canker which, fostered by religion, feeds on the root of her political improvements; be it allowed a self-banished Spaniard to describe the sources of such a strange anomaly in the New Constitution of Spain, and thus to explain to such as may not be unacquainted with his name as a Spanish writer, the true cause of an absence which might otherwise be construed into a dereliction of duty, and a desertion of that post which both nature and affection marked so decidedly for the exertion of his humble talents.

_Chelsea, June 1822._

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

LETTER I.

Mistakes of Travellers.--Townsend’s Accuracy.--View of Cadiz
from the Sea.--Religion blended with Public and Domestic Life
in Spain.--Customs relating to the Host or Eucharist.--Manners
and Society at Cadiz.--Passage by Sea to Port Saint Mary’s.--St.
Lucar.--Passage up the Guadalquivir to Seville.--Construction and
internal Economy of the Houses in that Town.--Knocking, and greeting
at the Door.--Devotion of the People of Seville to the Immaculate
Conception of the Virgin Mary. p. 1-22

LETTER II.

Difficulty of describing National Characters.--_Nobles_
and _Plebeians_, in Spain.--Purity of Blood.--_Tizon de
España._--Grandees.--_Hidalgos_ in Low Life.--Execution of an
_Hidalgo_.--Spanish Pride, visible among the Lower Classes.--Usual
Employment of Day at Seville.--Spanish Politeness.--Absence of
Jealousy in Modern Times.--Dinner.--_Siesta._--Public Walks.--Dress
of the Spanish Ladies.--Various Uses of the Fan.--Character of the
Spanish Females. p. 23-51