people thus formed cannot but be beautiful, and notwithstanding the varieties of distinct provinces, the following are its leading

features.

"The Spaniards possess that happy medium between levity and dullness which denotes the noblest men, and can only arise in such happy climates: a delightful mixture of animation and gravity, the elevated and the amiable; hence the noblest products of modern cultivation are to be met with here. Read the ancient annals of the people; hearken to the ancient Spanish and Moorish ballads and romances, when sung to the guitar; enter profoundly into the heroic spirit of their chivalrous orders. Is there a people in Europe who can exhibit in acts and exploits such splendid examples of valour, devotion, and love; who have so intimately and intellectually blended the romantic and religious enthusiasm of love and christianity; and who by such union have wrought more deeds of magnanimity and heroism? This spirit breathes still freshly in their ancient songs, and in them alone the proud character of the Spaniards may be found. Such were the vanquishers of the Moors, such the great captains in Italy, and the adventurers in India. Our petty age flies to such a life as to a beautiful dream, as to a long elapsed and primitive period; to us, alas! it is become so. The Spanish knight, as he appears there, an earnest character, and an object of dread, is swayed by the thirst of power, but it is for the sake of greatness; the love of gold is a secondary object: other conquerors seek gold or still lower things. The profound genius of a people cannot be more clearly shewn than in such character: contemplate Cortez, Pizarro, Guasco, Albuquerque, adventurers and conquerors; oppose to them the sea-knights of England and Holland. Do you feel no difference? You will then never feel any. The former were knights of the golden fleece, the others, Phœnician navigators. The Spaniards sought for gold and incense; the others, potatoes and tobacco. Hearken to the tones of their language; has the tenderest love, the proudest majesty, ever invented loftier sounds? And during the glorious age of Charles the Fifth, and Philip the Second, how far were they in language, poetry, in every art, science, and grace of life, beyond most Europeans! Give me only the Don Quixote of Cervantes, in which Nature has poured forth all that is most lovely, sweet, and fresh in humanity, all the tenderest sensibilities, all the sorene and significant understanding of life, like a gay spring full of songs and blossoms-give me this single hook and the divine man who could make it; give me the sublime enthusiasm, the holy spirit of eternal love, in Ponce di Leon. And I reverence the people that could produce from its body, any thing so noble and great.

"The nation could be ruined, but could never become vile and vulgar. The fidelity and honesty of Spaniards in the petty incidents of life, and in the more extensive concerns of politics, all Europe must honour even without understanding it. It is still the ancient land, they are still the ancient Iberians, and the ancient

Goths. Chivalry and its enthusiasm are gone, but integrity and moral worth have remained. An elevated piety has degenerated into a priest-ridden superstition; without enthusiasm, political honour, and liberty, the basis of all that is beautiful and good remain. Priest. hood and oppression have generated laziness and poverty, but could not produce a people of banditti. The ancient spirit of gravity and love is there, the deep enthusiasm still survives; and sweet notes still accompany the guitar under a serene heaven. Let the people be but shaken from the sleep of death, let a king be born who is a king, who knows how to command and counsel, and break the cowardly bondage under foreigners; and we shall then see-.

"And shall this noble people perish, and be obedient to Gauls, and hop and skip, and crow like them, as many hope, because they think that the culture of the next age must spring from the Seine? These are the genuine champions of Europe; the French only say they are. Europe cannot dispense with her champions, we cannot forego the hope that from the chaos in which we are, there may still arise a world of order and joy; till this hope be renounced, Europe cannot dispense with her champions. From the North came her redeemers and deliverers, from the South her cultivators. Northern greatness borders on Spanish elevation. May the loveliness and tenderness of the South form an invisible bond between them, and draw them together; and may the scales of justice, beauty, and humanity, be raised by them; and may Europe, which has so foolishly stained herself with blood, cultivate in common, the virtues and energies of humanity!"

The majority of men, belonging to the class of those

"Who think that nothing is but what is seen,"

would certainly before the spring of last year have considered this eloquent and beautiful eulogy of the Spaniards, as the rhapsody of a man who had formed his notions of their national character from tales of the Moorish wars, and the ballads of the CID, the Campeador; the reader into whose hands it might subsequently have fallen, without a testimony of its existence before that period, would have believed it to be designedly adapted to known events, rather than an anticipa. tion of them. Certainly none of our political philosophers can be brought forward, as exhibiting so distinct and clear a view of the peculiarities of the Spanish character, which alone could have led to the unlooked-for occurrences of the last year. It is only in the works of the great statesman of our age, the political prophet to whom posterity will assign a rank much higher than that of a parliamentary orator, that we can look for anticipations of future events arising from recondite, or moral causes. In BURKE's works we do find a few cursory strictures on Spain, every sentence of which merits our notice.

In the "Thoughts on French Affairs," published in the year 1791, Mr. Burke took a mournful and foreboding survey of the different states of Europe, of which it was the specific object to ascertain to what degree each country was replete with the pabulum, which might nourish the revolutionary flame recently kindled in Europe. Jacobinism was the endemic he dreaded; and the object of his anxious investigation was the circumstances which in every state would facilitate its introduction and dispersion. Mr. Burke also discerned, at the very commencement of the revolution, the spirit of foreign conquest in the counsels of the French revolutionary government. He was persuaded that the jacobin empire in France would, if it triumphed in that country, lead to the subjugation of all the European states, in the carrying of which into effect, jacobinism, or in other words, the rendering the populace, parties, or allies, in the war against the government, would be the grand expedient. The illustration of which prediction, we find in the history of the invasions of Holland and Italy. But not all the conquests of the French, and none of the latter, least of all the invasion of Spain, has had this character of jacobinism. Mr. Burke did not anticipate, for instance, an attack upon that kingdom in the least resembling what we have witnessed; and therefore some of his remarks, as far as they indicate a correct opinion of the character of the people, are vindicated, even though as anticipations of specific events they are contradicted. Mr. Burke. commences his remarks by one of his pithy and comprehensive sentences, "As to Spain it is a nerveless country." A

"That

statesman might well assert this, who was accustomed to consider rather political bodies, than the characters of nations, as arising from climate and other physical causes, operating upon the great mass of individuals ; and who having studied the political establishments formed by the government of the country, had witnessed the decline both of its navy and army, the neglect of salutary institutions for the promotion of the useful and liberal arts, the removal of the hereditary nobility from public affairs, and their base servility toward the worthless favourite and minion of the court, and the utter want of common faith and honesty on the part of the government towards the public creditor. "It does not possess the use, it only suffers the abuse of a nobility." The pseudo-cortes at Bayonne is a sufficient commentary on this sentence. body has been systematically lowered and rendered incapable by exclusion, and for incapacity excluded from affairs." Some of the recent calamitous military occurrences of the peninsula, are a corollary from this fact. Of the clergy he says, "In that body remains the only life which exists in Spain, and is not a fever." And certainly of the higher and more cultivated orders in Spain, the clergy only have displayed those popular and patriotic virtues, to which vulgar prejudice and common-place declamation, may, if it please, give the title of fanaticism, and superstition, and bigotry. The provincial character of the Spanish people, was correctly understood by Burke ;---" The Castilians have still remaining, a good deal of their old character, their gravidad, lealdad, and il temor de Dios; but that character neither is, nor ever was exactly true, except of the Castilians only." "The Catalans and the Arragonians too, in a good measure, have the spirit of the Miquelets, and much more of republicanism than of an attachment to royalty. They are more in the way of trade and intercourse with France; and upon the least internal movement, will disclose, and probably let loose, a spirit that may throw the whole Spanish monarchy into convulsions." Yet

VOL. II.

we recollect that it is in Arragon and Catalonia, at Saragosas and Gerona, that the most splendid feats of heroism have been wrought. While on the other hand, it is precisely in Castile that the fewest displays of valour and resolution have been made. This may have arisen in part, from the defenceless nature of the country, but something is to be ascribed to the character Mr. Burke eulogizes. Grazity, loyalty, and the fear of God, may indeed be stimulated to high exploits, but they favour rather passive, than active courage, and are too sedative in their tendency to be fit agents in resisting the furious and precipitous assaults of a French army.

The diversities which may be found between the predictions of Mr. Burke, and the subsequent events, are no discredit to his sagacity. The wise man will be honoured, who forewarns the inhabitants of a populous town, of the earthquake which is to shake it into ruins; though he do not exactly point out in what direction the shock will come, nor attempts to portray the ruins and vestiges which will be left when the convulsion has subsided.

It is likewise to be added, that had the invasion of Spain been a Jacobin invasion, the result would probably, in all respects, have been such as Mr. Burke anticipated. The most intelligent persons whom the writer of the present article met with in Spain, agreed in declaring, that the long and abhorred administration of the Prince of Peace, the contempt in which the king was universally held for his imbecility, and the detestation with which the queen was viewed for her vices, had so completely alienated the affections of the people from the house of Bourbon, that had Buonaparte found any slight pretext for making an ordinary ministerial war against the court, his entrance into the country would have been a triumph rather than a campaign. It was not till October 1807, that the prince of Asturias came forward and drew upon himself the notice and love of the people. He had been before merely an object of public compassion; he was considered as the