Wentworth Webster

“ The peculiar institution of the inquisition, following on that of the Santa Hermandad in civil matters, developed in Spain a degree of power to which it never attained in other lands. The certainty and the secrecy of its proceedings, the mingled pomp and horror of its "autos de fe," the whispers and the shudder with which men told of the tortures of its hidden processes, deeply impressed and captivated the imagination of a people singularly greedy of, and susceptible to, strong and vivid emotions. ”

“ The "woman blessed throughout all generations" does not look out to us from his canvas from the serene heights of perfect woman-hood which has found its crown in the mystery of the Motherhood of the Son of God, but in younger and more girlish forms he paints for us the maiden rapt in adoring ecstasy as she experiences the wonders of love divine, bathed in the golden light of a rapture which none but the very purest can ever feel, and which the very angels are represented as reverencing. ”

“ The Alcazar is a home of beauty. The patios, or inner courts, of many of the houses have remains of Moorish decoration. The Cathedral shows that Christian lags not far behind Moslem architecture. But Seville, on the Guadalquiver, is not a mere city of pleasure. Like Paris, its gay exterior contains a great deal of real work and commerce within. Since the invention of steam, allowing sea-going vessels to breast with ease the current of the Guadalquiver, it has drawn to itself a great deal of the traffic which formerly passed through the harbours of the Bay of Cadiz. ”

“ The fertility of decorative design, the exquisite use made of Arabic lettering, and the simple yet subtle forms of geometrical interlacing—apparently most fantastic, yet really ever subordinated to a just proportion with the whole—these are a theme of wondering admiration to every student. A whole grammar of ornament might be illustrated by examples taken from these buildings alone. The architecture of the houses of the Moorish aristocracy which still remain in Seville, Granada, Toledo, and Saragossa is wonderfully adapted both to the necessities of the climate and to domestic ornament. ”

“ It is not bad external political government, it is not a faulty constitution, but it is an administration in which corruption has become a tradition and the rule, that is the real evil in Spain. It is this which baffles every ministry that tries to do real good. Only a ministry, or succession of ministries, composed of men of thorough honesty, of iron will, and of competence in financial administration, supported by strong majorities, can hope to deal with this gigantic growth. ”

“ ETHNOLOGY, LANGUAGE, AND POPULATION. ON the first glance at a map of Spain and Portugal we are apt to think that few countries could have so well-defined a frontier as that formed by the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic. In so compact a country, and one so distinct and so shut off from the rest of Europe, we should expect to find a more unmixed and a more homogeneous population than in any of those states whose frontiers are more open and conventional. ”

“ If we seem to insist too much on ecclesiastical art in Spain, it is because, as we shall see still more clearly in the case of painting, art has here concentrated its choicest effort on religious subjects, and in them has won its greatest triumphs. Except, perhaps, in arms and in porcelain, in portrait-painting and in furniture, all the masterpieces of Spanish art are in some sense ecclesiastical. Take away religion from her art, how poor would be the residue, for even Arabian and Moslem art in Spain were essentially religious. ”

“ In picturesque beauty, when seen near at hand, these mountains are not nearly equal to the Pyrenees and to many minor chains; with rounded summits, they are bare and denuded of wood, and are entirely without the glacier forms, and the lakes and rushing streams, which delight us in the Alps. ”

“ Besides these larger rivers, there are on the Mediterranean slope innumerable smaller streams, whose waters, though of little geographical importance, are of the greatest utility to agriculture. In summer scarcely a drop of their waters reaches the sea; all is either employed for irrigation, or dissipated by evaporation; often they are dammed up to form reservoirs or pantanos, sometimes employed for rice culture. But small as these streams are, it is to them that this burning coast owes its beauty and fertility, its almost tropical vegetation and its rich products. ”

“ No less beautiful is the iron-work, in which a grand effect is often produced by simply noble proportions in the gates, rejas, and screens of her cathedrals and churches; and in another sphere, in the manufacture of arms, and of inlaying steel or iron with arabesque patterns of gold and silver, an art which has been lately revived with great success in Biscay and the Basque Provinces. In porcelain and pottery the majolica ware, made at Valencia, was renowned throughout Europe ”

“ The bare plains of the Castiles are now the great corn-producing country of Spain. But they have little or nothing of the beauty and variety of cultivated land in other countries. There is no succession of crops, no mixed husbandry, no scattered farm-houses, neither tree nor fence to break the bare monotony. The hill-sides and mountains are given up to pasture, the plains to wheat and maize. The husbandmen live in villages, and ride out on donkeys in early morn to their distant fields, and return home at night. ”

“ His "Don Quixote," though moving irrepressible laughter, will for ever remain one of the choicest representations of a brave, pure-minded, honourable gentleman, and tears of pity for him are not far distant from our smiles at his quaint insanities. Since the days of Cervantes one kind only of the chivalrous romances has really survived in literature, and that is the historical romance, of which the "Guerras Civiles de Granada" of the arch-priest Hita, mentioned above, is so good an example. ”

“ The architecture of the Arabs in Spain may be roughly divided into three periods: The first, from the eighth to the tenth century, tells most clearly of its origin as an imitation or modification of the Byzantine style; its masterpiece is the Mosque of Cordova. The second period, from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, shows the architects seeking their real style—it is a period of transition; its finest erection is the Giralda of Seville. The third period is when the Moorish style acquired its fullest development in the glorious Alhambra, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. ”

“ Thus, if Spain can at present boast no writer whom we can place undoubtedly and unreservedly in the very first rank, she shows an intellectual movement which, though confined at present to a comparatively small portion of her inhabitants, may, if it spread and continue, place her again in her proud position of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as one of the first of European nations, not perhaps in arms and power, but in literature, if not in science. ”

“ As Senor Tubino has well observed, from its position at the south-western angle of Europe, and the most westerly of Mediterranean lands, beyond which lay only the impassable ocean, it must early have become a very eddy of nations, where all the tribes and races who have successively held command of the Mediterranean must necessarily have halted, over which and in which all invaders who have crossed the Pyrenees from Northern Europe, or have passed the Straits of Gibraltar from Africa, must have surged in almost ceaseless conflict. ”

“ Heavy as the public debt of Spain undoubtedly is, and serious as are the charges imposed upon her by the still unsettled political condition of the country and of its principal colony—Cuba, she might more than pay the interest of her debts at the present rate of interest, and balance the expenditure, but for the administrative corruption and utter want of political morality, the fruit of long years of financial abuses, and which has become almost a fixed habit amongst all classes of the inhabitants. ”

“ The system of empleomania, whereby nearly every ill-paid employé is almost forced to pillage, the preference of this ill-paid idleness and of professional poverty to honest toil in trade or agriculture—these are the true foes to the prosperity of Spain. For party and political purposes, taxes are relaxed for those who should bear their equal share of the burden, only to fall with crushing weight on the honest workers, unconnected with, or who refuse to bribe the administration. ”

“ In spite, however, of all this mixture of races and of languages, Spain and the Spanish language has perhaps fewer dialects than any other European speech. From the Central Pyrenees to the Straits of Gibraltar only one dialect is used, the Spanish or Castilian, the purest and noblest of those which sprang from the decaying Latin. At the inner angle of the Bay of Biscay Basque is still spoken by a population of about 400,000 souls. The Galician dialect is far more closely allied to the Portuguese than to the Spanish, and should be considered as belonging to the former tongue. ”

“ In literature they are known as jurisconsults and historians. In Catalonia and Valencia we have the bright Provençal race. A race apt for commerce and for manufacturing industries; pushing, energetic, they gather to themselves the greater part of the commerce, manufactures, and shopkeeping of all kinds, as far as these are done by Spaniards, throughout the kingdom. Fiery in temper, and not to be implicitly trusted, especially in Valencia, their weapon is the knife, which they use sometimes on slight provocation; the hired assassins and bandits of Spain have always been recruited thence. ”

“ One class, not a tribe, the wretched commercial policy of Spain has developed to a greater extent than in any other country, that of the smuggler or contrabandista. He differs greatly in different districts, and even on the same line of frontier. In some parts contrabandista is almost synonymous with bandit, in others he is honest in his illegal trade, and more to be trusted with immense sums than the officials who arrest him. In a small way he is a type of the many contradictions of Spanish character and of "the things of Spain." ”

“ There are words which we only see in print, and seldom or never hear spoken; there are words which belong only to science or to pedantry; but there are others which are in daily and hourly use, and whose employment is many times more frequent than the whole number of words in all the rest of the language put together. It is thus that the contribution of Arabic to Spanish vocabulary is of far more importance than is apparent by its numerical proportion; many of the most common terms, especially of those used in the south of Spain, are of Arabic origin. ”

“ The theatre, which had striven hard in Spain to become the ally, or even the handmaid, of the Church, was contemptuously thrust aside by the latter, and within a century of Calderon's death, not even an Infanta could procure permission from the inquisition for a comedy in time of carnaval. No history of any value could be written under such conditions; the only outlet for literary skill lay in religious and mystic writings, which are of singular beauty. ”

“ Malaga.—The greater part of this province lies in an amphitheatre of mountains, stretching from the Sierra de Almijarras on the east to those of De la Nieve and of Ronda to the west. It faces the full southern sun, but is watered and irrigated by torrential streams from the mountains, at times almost dry, at others, as in December, 1880, rushing down in most destructive floods. The city, with over 110,000 inhabitants, boasts not only the finest climate in Spain, on which account it is greatly frequented by invalids in the winter, but its commerce is second in value to that of Barcelona. ”

“ In some provinces not two-thirds of the whole is returned at all, and much land that is productive is returned as uncultivated. From the extent of the contraband trade and the corruption of the custom-house officers, the amount levied on imports and exports can hardly be above two-thirds of their proper value. In fact, what Spain needs above everything at present is an honest and impartial administration. The causes of her poverty lie not so much in bad laws or a faulty constitution, but in a corrupt and negligent administration. ”

“ The civil and religious architecture of the Spanish Arabs is well worthy of most careful study, and is a grand example of the artistic talent of a race which, though debarred by its religious faith from the reproduction of human, or even of animal form, and delighting neither in the scenes of the theatre or the circus, has yet left masterpieces of architectural beauty in lands so wide apart as Spain, Egypt, Persia, and Hindostan. ”

“ Nothing more plainly shows the character of the people, and the mischief of "empleomania" than such a fact in a country whose natural riches in agriculture and mining are so great and so little developed, where there is so large a field for industrial enterprises of many kinds, and where the fruits of all these are at present almost wholly reaped by foreigners.
The primary education of Spain, though nominally everywhere alike, is really so very varied as to defy any average description. ”