Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

In the article on Cervantes which appeared in the University for August, [Footnote 2] allusion was made to his imprisonment and harsh treatment in a certain town of La Mancha. It is the same whose name, he says, in the commencement of Don Quixote, he does not choose to remember. It has been ascertained that this village of unenviable reputation is Argamasilla; and the very house where he resided against his will, and dreamily arranged the plan of his prose epic, has been identified. The Infanta Don Sebastian has purchased it, with a view to its preservation, and a patriotic and spirited printer, Don Manuel de Ribadeneira, has obtained permission to work off two impressions there of the Life and Adventures of the ingenious Hidalgo, Don Quixote. One is, in the Paris idiom, an edition of luxury, intended for the libraries and _salons_ of the great, the other a carefully executed but low-priced edition for the populace.

[Footnote 2: See Catholic World for October, 1886.]

{27}

The English cannot be accused of having neglected their own Cervantes in his need. He appears to have united to his comprehensive and mighty genius, good business habits, consulted the tastes of his public while endeavoring to improve them, watched the behavior of his door-keepers, and though probably not a rigid self-denier, made his outlay fall far short of his income, and enjoyed some years of life in respectable retirement. So his countrymen feeling no remorse on his account, show their respect for his memory by eating and drinking heartily on stated occasions, and boring each other with stereotyped speeches. When suitable days for jubilees or centenaries or tercentenaries arrive, they take more trouble on themselves. They journey to a small town in Warwickshire, and celebrate the event in as tiresome a fashion as if they were members of the "British Association for bettering the Universe," under all the inconveniences of crowded rooms, crowded vehicles going and coming, and dear hotels. They manage matters of the kind in Spain with a difference.

Some years since a statue was erected to Cervantes in front of the Congress building, and the historian, Antonio Cavanilles, took occasion to mention the opinion of the ghost of the great Spaniard on the matter in a dialogue held between them.

"During my life they left me in poverty. Now they raise statues which are
of no manner of use to me, and they never celebrate a mass for the repose
of my soul--a thing of which I have much need."

Whether the Marquis of Molins, the same gentleman who superintended the editions of Don Quixote at Argamasilla, took this appeal to heart or not, it is certain that since the year 1862 a solemn high mass and office have been celebrated for the above-mentioned purpose before the Royal Academy of Madrid. M. Antoine de Latour, [Footnote 3] in his Études Littéraires sur l'Espagne Moderne, has left an account of one of these solemnities, some particulars of which are worth being presented.

[Footnote 3: This gifted and agreeable writer was born at Sainte Yrieix
(Haute Vienne) in 1818, and educated at the college of Dijon. He held
professorships at the College Bourbon and the college Henri Quatre.
Louis Philippe confided to him the education of the young Duc de
Montpensier, and in 1848 he shared the exile of the house of Orleans.
He made his literary _début_ in poetry, his other productions
being an Essay on the History of France in the Nineteenth Century, an
Account of the Duc de Montpensier's Journey to the East, and and essays
on Luther, Racan, Vertot, Malherbe. &c. He has resided for a
considerable time in Spain, and written four or five works Spanish
subjects.]

In 1616 Cervantes was interred in the church of the Convent of the Trinitarians, where his daughter had taken the veil. Some fifteen years afterward the community removed to the site now occupied by them, and the impression is strong that in the removal the remains of the poet were brought to their own house, his daughter being alive, or but recently dead at the time. In the chapel of their convent the annual solemnity takes place on the 16th April. The convent stands in the street called after Cervantes' contemporary and dramatic rival, Lope de Vega. We proceed with M. de Latour's account of what he witnessed.

Our visitor found the chapel hung with black cloth trimmed with gold fringe. In the centre was a catafalque on which rested the habit of St. Francis borne by Cervantes during the last three years of his life, a sword, prison-fetters, a crown of laurel, and a copy of the first edition of Don Quixote. At each corner of the catafalque stood a disabled soldier, and at each side, and extending the whole length of the chapel, ran two lines of seats for the members of the various academies.

At the lower end of the chapel, on seats connecting the extremities of the long rows mentioned, sat the Alcaid, the rector of the University, and the curé of Alcala de Henares, Cervantes' birthplace, where the record of his baptism was discovered some time since.

{28}

Among the remarkable personages met to celebrate the occasion, M. de Latour noticed the Marquis de Molins, its institutor; M. Hartzembuch, a dramatic poet, an idolizer of Cervantes, and the zealous superintendent of the two Argamasilla editions of the Don; Ventum de la Vega, the Marquis de Santa Cruz, whose ancestor fought at Lepanto, and Antonio Cavanilles, the eminent historian before mentioned. Seated behind the academicians were the most illustrious ladies of Spain, all appropriately attired in mourning dress.

The Archbishop of Seville celebrated high mass, the different parts of which were accompanied with music as old as the days of Cervantes himself. The distinguished composer, Don Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, had sought these pieces out with much trouble, some of them having for a long time been only heard in the Sistine chapel at Rome. We subjoin the openings of some of these, with the authors and dates.

_Regem cui omnia vivunt_ (the king by whom all things live) was composed by Don Melchior Robledo, chapel master in Saragossa in 1569, the same year when Cervantes' little collection of elegiac poems on Queen Isabel appeared.

_Domine in furore tuo_ (Lord (rebuke) me not in thy fury) was the composition of Don Andres Lorente, organist in Alcala de Henares, Cervantes' birthplace. He himself probably heard it sung there in his youth.

_Versa est in luctum cithara mea_ (my harp has changed to sorrow) was composed for the funeral of Philip II. by Don Alfonso Lobo.

_Libera me_ (deliver me), the composition of Don Matias Romero, Chapel Master to Philip III., dates from about the death of Cervantes.

Don Francisco de Paula Benavides, the young bishop of Siguenza, preached the sermon. Taking his text from St. Paul, "Being dead he still speaketh through faith," he proceeded with the panegyric of the great-souled poet and soldier, and of all the illustrious dead who have honourcd Spain by their writings. He did not neglect to interest the nuns, who were listening with all their might behind their lattices. Their order had been instrumental in restoring the brave Saavedra to his country, and to their exertions Spain and the world were in part indebted for the Don Quixote and the Exemplary Novels. They possessed the remains of the poet in their house, and thus bound to his memory they must not omit the care of his salvation to their prayers. The delivery of the discourse, according to M. Latour, was marked with a noble simplicity, and a manner combining sweetness with vigour.

Next morning he returned to the convent, hoping to be gratified with the sight of Cervantes' tomb. Alas! he learned that when the remains were transferred from the old house, sufficient attention was not paid to keep them apart from those of others who were removed along with them. So, though it is morally certain that the present convent of the Trinitarians guards all that remains of the body, once so full of life and active energy, they are now undistinguishable from the relics of the nameless individuals who had received interment in the same building.

The Modern Novel:
Donna Caecelia De Faber.

We are not to imagine Spain insensible to the merits of her living gifted sons and daughters, and ever employed in shedding tears over the tombs of her Cervantes, her Lope de Vega, or her Mendoza. No. She possesses living writers whose names are not only known from Andaluçia to Biscay, but are even spoken of in Paris _salons_. The most distinguished among these is the lady who chooses to style herself _Fernan Caballero_, her real name being Caecilia de Faber, her birthplace Alorges in Switzerland, and her father, M. Bohl de Faber, a Hamburgh merchant, and consul for that city at Cadiz.

{29}

She has been married more than once, and thus enabled to combine experience with natural ability in her pictures of life and manners. Through the favor of the queen she holds apartments in the Alcazar of Seville, and the splendid old Moorish city could not possess a writer better qualified to paint the manners of the little-doing, much-enjoying people of that southern paradise, Andalulçia, and the delights of the happy climate, where life is not only supportable, but enjoyable at very small expense.

Besides happily seizing and vividly sketching what takes place among the aristocracy of Seville in their Patios [Footnote 4] and Tertulias (reunions in their _salons_), this authoress has made herself thoroughly acquainted with the circumstances and characters and peculiar customs of the country laborers and shepherds. Melodramatic situations abound in some of them, and perhaps these are more relished by her Spanish readers than others whose chief merit consists in truthful and picturesque tableaux of the order of things among which they are placed, and which consequently possesses no novelty for them. We can readily conceive how French and English students of her novels and romances would prefer this latter class for their entertainment. Who would not rather listen to a couple of Andaluçian peasants discussing the clime and people of Britain than to some terrible, exciting though undignified, domestic tragedy? (_A_. is dissuading _B_. from making the voyage to Britain.)

"_A_. The earth is there covered with so deep a crust of snow that
people are buried in it.

"_B_. Most Blessed Mary! But they are quiet folk, and do not carry
stilettoes.

"_A_. They have no olives, no gaspacho, [footnote 5] and must put
up with black bread, potatoes, and milk.

"_B_. Much good may it do them.

[Footnote 4: The Patios are the interior flagged courts surrounded by
colonnades from the roof of which lamps are suspended. In the centre of
the court is a fountain surrounded by shrubs in fruit or flower. Seated
on sofas in the corridor, or on carpets near the fountain, the princely
owners enjoy an elysium during hot weather.]

[Footnote 5: Soup made up of olive oil, vinegar, spices, etc.]

"_A_. The worst is, there are neither monks nor nuns there; the
churches are few, and the walls of them as bare as if they were
hospitals; no private chapels, no altars, no crucifixion.

"_B_. Oh, my sun, my white bread, my church, my Maria Santissima, my
delightful land, my Dios Sacramentado! How could I think to change you
for that land of snow, of black bread, of bare-walled churches, of
heretics? Horrible!"

Fernan Caballero enters with warm-hearted sympathy into the pleasures and troubles of her country people. Few could read without interest her sketch of the peasants returning at evening from their work. We fancy Sancho Panza and a neighbor coming home to meet the greeting of Tereza and his children, himself mounted on _Dapple_, while the little foal frolics about, unconscious of its own future life of labor. Sancho carries a basket of fruit and vegetables covered with the sappy maize stalks, which will furnish a delightful supper to the patient _burra_. Sancho's neighbor is riding beside him, and you will hear in a quarter of an hour of their conversation more proverbs than John Smith and Tom Brown would quote in seven years. The burras quicken their pace as they approach the village, for the children of both men are running to meet them, while their wives are looking out for them from the porches of their doors. Sancho dismounts and sets his younger child on Dapple, while his elder frolics about her and makes free with her ears. Sancho's neighbor gets his youngest into his lap, while one of the elder boys takes the halter and the other gambols about with the trusty house dog, asses and dog being much better treated than if their lot lay in Berkshire or Donegal.

With their innumerable rhymed proverbs, their chatty propensities, their happy clime, fine country, facility of procuring a livelihood, few wants, and lively and happy temperaments, the Andaluçian peasants afford suitable subjects to Fernan Caballero's pencil. {30} They see in the many natural advantages they possess, the goodness of God and the favors of the saints; and their pious legends, in connection with every object round them, are innumerable. "Toads and serpents are useful in absorbing the poisonous exhalations of the earth; the serpent attempted to bite the Holy Infant on the journey into Egypt, so Saint Joseph appointed him to creep on his belly thenceforth. Some trees have the privilege of permanent foliage because they sheltered the HOLY FAMILY on the same journey. The Blessed Virgin hung the clothes of the Infant Jesus on a rosemary bush to dry, so its sweetest perfume and brightest blossoms are reserved for Friday. The swallow plucked some of the thorns out of the Saviour's crown, therefore he is a favorite bird with all Christians, while the owl is obliged to keep his eyes shut and whimper out, '_cruz, cruz,_' because he irreverently stared at our suffering Lord on the cross. The hedgehog should be well treated, because he presented to the Blessed Virgin some sweet apples on the tips of his prickles, while the earwig is deservedly hated for boring his way into, and effectually spoiling the nicest of them." Most of these poetically develop fancies are or were familiar with the Roman Catholic peasantry of Ireland, and probably amongst the populace of moat continental countries.

Perhaps the most powerful of our authoress's stories is La Gaviota (the sea-gull), giving the career of a selfish, ill-disposed country girl, gifted with some beauty and a fine voice. She obtains a gentle German doctor for husband, is patronized by a duke, trained for the office of a prima donna, becomes fascinated by a bull fighter, proves false to her estimable husband, and ends badly of course. Devout and moral as the authoress undoubtedly is, she does not avoid strong and exciting situations no more than Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe or Mrs. Oliphant. Such is the scene where the betrayed husband sees her seated beside the bullfighter among his unedifying associates, and that other of the death of her paramour by a furious animal in the arena before her eyes, and these are matched by passages in the Alvareda Family.[Footnote 6] This story, which is entirely occupied with country folk, and incidents of the war in Buonaparte's time, and scenes of brigandage, is next to La Gaviota in power. The match-making scene between the garrulous and saving Pedro and his relative that is to be, the _Tia_ Maria, fully as provident as himself, might have happened in a country farmhouse in Wexford or Carlow, and would have been described by Banim or Griffin or Carleton, nearly in the same terms.

[Footnote 6: A translation of this story was given in The Catholic
World of last year, as Perico the Sad; or, The Alvareda Family.]

The Andalusians are as partial to bantering each other as the natives of Kilcullen or Bantry, but all is taken in good humor.

In reading the country business in this and others of our authoress's tales we have been forcibly reminded of corresponding pictures so truthfully painted in Adam Bede. We could scarcely fancy such a piece of extravagance as the following to be uttered by a Spanish lady, till assured of the fact by Fernan Caballero. _Casta_ wishes to induce her elderly lover, Don Judas Taddeo Barbo, to cease his persecutions. He does not read, and entertains feelings of repugnance to literary ladies in general; so she takes him into her confidence.

"'Yes, yes I am a poet, but do not mention it, I beg. Some of my works
are printed, but I have put the names of my friends to them. Martinez de
la Rosa's poems are mine, not his. I have also tried my hand on
theatrical pieces. The Consolations of a Prisoner, attributed to the Duke
de Rivas, is my composition.'

"'Who would have suspected a lady, so young, so beautiful, so womanly, so
attractive? Why, a writing woman ought to be old, ugly, and slovenly--a
man-woman!'

"'All prejudices, Don Judas. Have you read my Tell?'

"'Miguel Tell, the Treasurer? No. I never read; it injures my sight.'

{31}

"'Well I must read an extract from my great historical work on William
Tell, not Miguel the Treasurer.' (Here poor Don Judas began to meditate
an escape, the very thing the lady wished.)

"'William Tell, my hero, was a native of Scotland who refused to bow down
to the beaver hat of the English General, _Malbrun_, set up on a
high pole. Out of this circumstance arose the thirty years' war, at the
end of which Tell was proclaimed King of England under the title of
William the Conqueror. He brought disgrace on his royal name by causing
his wife, the beautiful Anne Boleyn, to be beheaded. Struck with remorse
he sent his son Richard Lion-heart on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On
his return he was imprisoned for his great admiration of Luther, Calvin,
Voltaire, and Rousseau, members of the Revolutionary Directory which put
the pious King Louis XIV. to death. About that time Don Pedro the Cruel
established the inquisition in Spain to prevent such proceedings in his
kingdom, and thus he obtained his surname'"

Poor Don Judas was terrified by the erudition of the cunning lady, who thus got rid of him.

The collected works of this lady have been printed at the expense of the queen. It is only seventeen or eighteen years since she began to write, and, if we can trust the accuracy of foreign biographers, she is now in her seventieth year. Two volumes of selections from her works entitled The Castle and Cottage in Spain, have appeared in an English dress.

Rustic Tales: Don Antonio De Trueba.

The writer next to be noticed, by birth a Biscayan peasant, is now or was lately a sub-editor of a newspaper. Don Antonio de Trueba y la Quintana was born 24th December, 1821. In the preface to one of his works he presents this picture of his birthplace and his early life.

"On the slope of one of the mountains of Biscay stand four white houses
nearly hidden in a wood of walnut and chestnut trees, and which cannot be
seen at any distance till winter has deprived the trees of their foliage.
There I passed the first fifteen years of my life.

"In the valley is a church whose spire pierces the surrounding canopy of
foliage, and is seen above the chestnut and ash trees. In this church
they celebrate two masses, one at the rising of the sun, the other two
hours afterward.

"We, the young boys of the hamlet rose every Sunday with the song of the
birds, and went down to the early mass, singing and jumping over the
bushes. The elders of the families attended the later devotions. While
the fathers and grandfathers were so occupied, I took my seat under a
cherry tree opposite the door, and had a full view of the entire vale
till it approached the shore. I was soon joined by four or five young
girls with cheeks as blooming as the cherries which hung over our beads,
or the red ribbons which bound the long braids of their hair. They would
request me to make some verses for them to sing in the evening to the
accompaniment of the basque tambourine, when the young would be dancing,
and the aged looking on in sympathy with their enjoyment."

Don Antonio was already a poet, though his material sources of information and inspiration were very easily counted. His library consisted of the Fueros (Customs) of Biscay, Samanego's Fables, Don Quixote, a book of ballads, and two or three volumes of the Lives of the Saints. At fifteen years of age (1836), the Carlist cause gathering the youth of Biscay to its side, Antonio's parents not being enthusiastic partisans of that party, sent their son to a distant relative in Madrid, who could do nothing better for the future poet and novelist than employ him in his hardware shop to take down door-hinges, pokers, and frying-pans for his customers.

For ten tedious years did our poet in embryo do the duty of a shopman by day, treat himself the to a book when be could, and spend in study great part of the time that should be given to sleep. Bad business or failure obliged him at the end of the time mentioned to look out for other occupation, and since that time he has been connected with journalism, the evenings still being devoted to poetry and romance.

The ordinary vehicle in which the nameless poets of Spain utter their thoughts to the people is the quatrain, in which the second and fourth lines rhyme after a fashion, the accented vowels corresponding without exception, the consonants when it pleases Apollo. This is what they call the _Romance_, and in which Trueba has endeavored to improve the taste of the people by a genuine poetic feeling, and perfection in the structure of the verse.

{32}

But our Biscayan thought a poet's life incomplete without the sympathy which only a loving and intelligent wife can afford. So he incurred the expense of a household, as well as gave support to his aged parents. Along with laboring at the public press and writing and publishing Los Cantares, he found time to compose his Rose-colored Tales, all concerned with the ordinary life of the country in which his boyhood was passed, and all seen through that softly colored magic medium through which mature age loves to look back to the period of careless hopeful youth. These stories are called The Resurrection of the Soul, The Stepmother, From our Country to Heaven. The Judas of the House, and Juan Palamo. All end happily, all are imbued with the purest morality, and breathe an atmosphere in which live the best feelings of our nature.

While writing the dedication of them to his wife, he was enlivened by the anticipation of a visit they would shortly make to his natal village.

"While I write this, the most cherished wish of my life is about to be
gratified. Before the July sun withers up the flowers, the breezes and
the flowers of my native hills shall cool our foreheads, and perfume our
hair. The venerable man who honors himself and thee in calling thee his
daughter, is now going from house to house in the village, and telling
the companions of my boyhood, while tears of joy find their way down his
check, 'My children are coming; my son is about revisiting his native
valleys as lovingly as he bade them adieu twenty years ago.'

"And our father and our brothers are thinking on us every moment, and
doing all in their humble means to beautify and cheer the apartments
destined for us. Every time they come to the windows, they expect to see
my form on the hillock where they caught the last site of me seventeen
years ago."

Alas! what disappointments wait on such pleasant anticipations! Paying a tardy visit to the scenes so lovingly and pleasurably remembered, the careworn elderly man finds dear old houses levelled; new, raw ones reared on their site; old paths and ways deserted, and new roads laid down; new and uninteresting topics filling up conversation, the once fresh and fair romantic boys and girls now common-place husbands and wives, except such as have been removed by death or change of residence. His former comrades, youths and maids once buoyant with bright hopes, are now gray-haired and wrinkled, or distressed, or departed, and of the revered and loved old people of long ago not one has been left to bid him welcome. There are now no ties to detain him in his long regretted native place; he hastens back to his ordinary colorless occupation and cares, rendered agreeable or tolerable by habit, and wishes he had not gone on that sorrowful journey.

In the greater part of these tales figures the Indian, that is, one who has spent some time in Mexico or the West Indies, and returns to cheer or disturb the former companions of his early life. The narratives are made up of simple village annals, loves and jealousies, injustices and their punishments, generous deeds and their recompenses, constancy sharply tried and victorious, unions at the threshing floors, Sunday morning devotions, Sunday evening recreations, troubles of good housewives with their play-loving little boys, and all the worries and comforts and joys and griefs that attend on the lives of those whose lot is to cultivate the earth, the curé always filling the office of the good fairy in household tales.

Satire: Don Jose Gonzalez De Tejada.

Don José Gonzalez de Tejada may be taken as the representative man of the living Spanish satirists. Few looking on the steady, easy-going, fat, and florid young man with good-nature playing about the corners of his mouth, would suspect the keen spirit of satire which inspires his verses. {33} Making use of the romance form before explained, he celebrated in the public papers the late triumphs of his country over the Moors, and these verses were in every one's mouth. In his satires he never condescends to personalities. He lashes selfishness, rage for wealth, worldliness, lack of patriotism, etc. He calls his collection "Anacreontic Poems of the latest Fashion," but they have nothing of the genuine Anacreontics but the form. The classic student, or even the reader of Moore's translation, recollects the bibulous old poet's direction to the painter about his mistress's portrait. Here is the Spanish equivalent:

"Figure to me, O photographer of my soul!
the beauty who holds me in thrall.

"As to countenance, let her be dark or fair,
to me it's all the same.

"But let sparkling diamonds give lustre to her tresses,
and two golden lamps hang from her ears.

"Let her neck be dark, or possess the whiteness of alabaster,
but for decency's sake cover it with pearls or sapphires.

"Let her graceful form be shrouded with rich valuable stuffs.
A rich binding always enhances the value of books.

"While she rolls along in her _calèche_ my
attention is occupied with her rich liveries
and the cost of the equipage.

"Happy he who, prancing along by the carriage,
or seated by her side, cigar in mouth,
can exclaim, 'All that surrounds me is mine!'

"Paint her for me in ball costume, at the mass,
or the _retiro_, ever richly dressed,
ever surrounded by opulent charms.

"But alas! her greatest charms you cannot
see to portray--her father's crowns!
On these is my heart fixed."

Don José is somewhat old fashioned in his notions. He does not attribute all the qualities of and overruling Providence to the mere progress of science and the additions to our corporal conveniences. Here is his vision of the origin of printing:

"Turning the earth into a sponge with his tears,
man presented himself all dreeping at the throne of Jupiter.

"And cried, 'Good evening, O powerful god,
maker of stars, of worlds, and of domestic fowl!

"Thou createdst us one day from nothing
mixed with a little mud; thou hast bestowed
on us genius enveloped in a soft covering of flesh.

"'The world is a cage, and each of us a
parrot climbing and balancing himself over
his neighbor's head.

. . . . .

"'Thou hast bestowed us ears which to
the deaf are a mere ornament, and a tongue,
best gift of all.

"'Placed between the teeth she gives
them to understand that unless she lies, they
can have nothing to chew.

"'But alas! in our time she is incapable to
express all that the fruitful brain conceives
and brings forth.

"'Lengthen it then the third of a perch, or
give it for aid an additional organ.

"'Juppy made a grimace, and the affrighted
hills sunk, and the poles trembled.

"'Well,' said the deity, always prodigal of gifts,
'I shall convert into tongues sundry vile things of this lower world.

"'Of old shirts, of disgusting rags, I shall
make gay clothes for the press,
flesh and blood for the daily paper.

"'In the feathered garb of the goose are
cannons sufficient to win treasures.

"'Let your arms cease to brandish the war-like steel,
and turn inert and fat bodies of men into sieves.

"'Iron fashioned into slender tongues
which sing along the paper, shall there engrave
the conceptions of genius.

"'And in order that you may attain the steepest summits,
I shall furnish your heads with pride and envy in abundance.

"'Advance, throw shame behind, flatter the proud,
copy, deride, calumniate, and be
sure to burn incense in your own honor.

"'I have spoken.' And he added, rubbing his chin,
'Henceforth you are a man; hitherto you were but an ape.'"

History: Don Antonio Cavanilles.

Don Antonio Cavanilles, an advocate and member or the Academy, has distinguished himself by his yet unfinished history of Spain, an interesting narrative, evincing the most patient research, and attractive from the adjuncts of customs and phases of the different eras, and personal traits of the historical personages. Don Modesto Lafuente is engaged on another history of the same country. Don Antonio belongs to the school of Livy and Herodotus, Don Modesto writes in the spirit and with the pen of a Manchester radical.

{34}

The Drama: Don Adelardo Lopez De Ayala.

Zealous as the first historian for the preservation of the heroic and unselfish character of the genuine Hidalgo, Don Adelardo Lopez de Ayala writes his drama of "So Much per Cent," in which he excites unmeasured contempt for the greed of gold, and the rage of speculation, whose visit to the old soil of chivalry the author deprecates with all his might.

Don Gaspar Bono Serrano, a brave and devout military chaplain, once attending the wounded in Don Carlos's camp, and an Arragonese by birth, has given the lie to the public impression that no poet is born outside of Castile and Andalulçia.

While it must be owned with regret that pestilent French novels have found their way in abundance across the Pyrenees, the native literature of Spain, with scarce an exception, maintains its ancient _prestige_ for Christian morality. Long may the word continue to be said!

Want of space prevents any notice of the _feuilleton_ and the drama of Spain at the present day, and other literary topics interesting the Spanish capital. An instance of the interest taken in sound fictional literature in high quarters is furnished by the publication of the complete collected novels of Fernan Caballero, and of Antonio Trueba at the expense of the Queen. Meanwhile Fernan, or rather Doña Caecilia, (_née_) de Faber, dwells in the Royal Alcazar of Seville in apartments granted by her queen, employs herself writing an educational work for the junior portion of the royal family, and enjoys an extensive view from her windows over the old Moorish buildings, the Guadalquiver, and the charming Andaluçian landscape through which it winds.

------

Original.

The Godfrey Family; or, Questions Of The Day