Spanish Life in Town and Country | Page 8

God," if indeed he is aware that he
possesses any.
The danger of the thorough awakening may be that which broke out so
wildly during Castelar's short and disastrous attempt at a republic: that
when once he breaks away from the binding power of his old religion,
he may have nothing better than atheism and anarchism to fall back
upon. The days of the absolute reign of ignorance and superstition are
over; but the people are deeply religious. Will the Church of Spain
adapt itself to the new state of things, or will it see its people drift away
from its pale altogether, as other nations have done? This is the true
clerical question which looms darkly before the Spain of to-day.
To return, however. The Austrian kings of Spain had brought her only
ruin. With the Bourbons it was hoped a better era had opened, but it
was only exchanging one form of misrule for another. The kings
existed for their own benefit and pleasure; the people existed to
minister to them and find funds for their extravagance. Each succeeding
monarch was ruled by some upstart favourite, until the climax was
reached when Godoy, the disgraceful Minister of Charles IV., and the
open lover of his Queen, sold the country to Napoleon. Then indeed
awoke the great heart of the nation, and Spain has the everlasting glory
of having risen as one man against the French despot, and, by the help
of England, stopped his mad career. Even then, under the base and
contemptible Ferdinand VII., she underwent the "Terror of 1824," the
disastrous and unworthy regency of Cristina, and the still worse rule of
her daughter, Isabel II., before she awoke politically as a nation, and,
her innumerable parties forming as one, drove out the Queen, with her
camarilla of priests and bleeding nuns, and at last achieved her
freedom.
For, whatever may be said of the last hundred years of Spain's history,
it has been an advance, a continuous struggle for life and liberty. There
had been fluctuating periods of progress. Charles III., a truly wise and

patriotic monarch, the first since Ferdinand and Isabella, made
extraordinary changes during his too short life. The population of the
country rose a million and a half in the twenty-seven years of his reign,
and the public revenue in like proportions under his enlightened
Minister, Florida Blanca. No phase of the public welfare was neglected:
savings banks, hospitals, asylums, free schools, rose up on all sides;
vagrancy and mendicancy were sternly repressed; while men of science
and skilled craftsmen were brought from foreign countries, and it
seemed as if Spain had fairly started on her upward course. But he died
before his time in 1788, and was followed by a son and grandson, who,
with their wives, ruled by base favourites, dragged the honour of Spain
in the dust. Still, the impulse had been given; there had been a break in
the long story of misrule and misery; Mendizábal and Espartero
scarcely did more than lighten the black canopy of cloud overhanging
the country for a time; but at last came freedom, halting somewhat, as
must needs be, but no longer to be repressed or driven back by the
baneful influence known as palaciö, intrigues arising in the immediate
circle of the Court.
CHAPTER II
TYPES AND TRAITS
It is the fashion to-day to minimise the influence of the Goths on the
national characteristics of the Spaniard. We are told by some modern
writers that their very existence is little more than a myth, and that the
name of their last King, Roderick, is all that is really known about them.
The castle of Wamba, or at least the hill on which it stood, is still
pointed out to the visitor in Toledo, perched high above the red torrent
of the rushing Tagus; but little seems to be certainly known of this
hardy Northern race which, for some three hundred years, occupied the
country after the Romans had withdrawn their protecting legions. On
the approach of the all-conquering Moor, many of the inhabitants of
Spain took refuge in the inaccessible mountains of the north, and were
the ancestors of that invincible people known in Spain as "los
Montañeses," from whom almost all that is best in literature, as well as
in business capacity, has sprung in later years.

How much of the Celt-Iberian, or original inhabitant of the Peninsula,
and how much of Gothic or of Teuton blood runs in the veins of the
people of the mountains, it is more than difficult now to determine. It
had been impossible, despite laws and penalties, to prevent the
intermingling of the races: all that we certainly know is that the
inhabitants of Galicia, Asturias, Viscaya, Navarro, and Aragon have
always exhibited the characteristics