Yet however great and however gruesome the danger, there is never a lack of aspirants to the laurels of Frascuelo and Guerrita. The Calle Sevilla swarms at almost any hour with hordes of maletas,* who delude themselves into the belief that by growing a coleta à la Chinoise, and doing no work, there remains but a single step between their present condition and the pinnacle of taurine fame. They block the pavement to the prejudice of passers-by, and figure not infrequently in the registers of the police court. Yet an indulgent nation tolerates them without a murmur; for are they not devoted to the art of Montes? And is not the nation also?

And now we arrive at the ethical question-is bullfighting a cruel custom, unworthy of a polite people, and which ought to be abolished? In this respect it is not my intention to emit any opinion of a personal nature. Whether I am myself an aficionado is a detail which can hardly be of moment to my readers; and during these three chapters on the national sport of the Peninsula, I am scrupulously limiting myself to the bald narration of a group of facts, together with the points immediately deducible from them. I cannot admit an obligation to do more. A book on Spain without a notice of the toreo would be glaringly incomplete: therefore I have included the said art, which fills the said three chapters. The allowance of space is really disproportionate; for with strict regard to the popularity of the toreo I should have filled, not three

A slang term bestowed upon the incapable and out-of-a-job class of bullfighter.

chapters, but rather thirty.

Not so very many

years have elapsed since his Catholic Majesty King Ferdinand the Seventh established a national bullfighting academy. At the present moment there are no columns in the newspapers of greater consequence than those containing the reseña of the corridas, both in Madrid and in the provinces. Without going so far as to say that the torero's coleta is as dearly venerated an emblem as the Chinaman's pigtail, there are many reasons why the bullfighter should think no small beer of himself, especially if he dies in harness, in the infirmary of the plaza, and surrounded by sentimental revisteros and his cuadrilla. Then, indeed, no words can illustrate the splendour of his apotheosis. His likeness, artistically festooned with crape, will be exhibited in many a photographer's window. His funeral is sure to be the very best obtainable, and as a rule subscribed for by his admirers. The press, avidous of sensation, is certain to omit no detail of the ceremony; how the martyr's aged father beats his breast, and utters harrowing groans; how his mother and his "sisters and his cousins and his aunts" are seized by one sincope after another; how the multitude, breaking tumultuously into the cemetery, jostles and fights and ruthlessly tears up the tombs of other and less sainted beings in order to gaze upon the darling's coffin to the very last; and how, by an invariable coincidence, a mysterious and anonymous female, of distinguished carriage" and "extraordinary beauty," though, oddly enough, with "her head and features impenetrably concealed by a veil," falls in a fit wherever the concourse is thickest, and refuses

in her most conspicuous and anguished tones to quit the camposanto, and her querido's beneficent remains. It is assuredly worth while to battle with wild beasts for such an end as this. Believe me, in the lidia alone are glory and good works deservedly esteemed and generously rewarded; for, to cite a single instance, the tomb erected to the peerless Espartero is such as many a philanthropist might justly envy.

Not many Spaniards have been evil or shortsighted enough to exclaim against the bullfight Isabella the First, Jovellanos, the Count of Aranda, Charles the Third, Emilio Castelar, Martínez Campos-people "of no importance," all of them; and, among the living, the editor of El Correo, Sr Ferreras.

Spain pays no heed to any of these agitators, but continues unmoved the proud traditions of the arena. The superb bull-ring inaugurated not long ago at Barcelona was consecrated by the clergy in procession,* on the very day on which a novel of the naughty Tolstoi was thrust upon the list librorum expurgatorum; and even in France the afición is swiftly gaining ground.

The polemics engendered by the Spaniards themselves in favour of and against bullfighting, are a worthy match for the virulence of her political partidos; and indeed some of the arguments, however earnestly intended, are not devoid of humour. I have before me a number of

* A measure with which I must avow my honest sympathy; for the accumulated bull-rings of the world have been responsible for less bloodshed than the pulpit of many a single cathedral !

polemico-taurine pamphlets, besides the criticism of Jovellanos, and the conferencia delivered by Don Luis Vidart in the Madrid Ateneo.* Not the least original of Señor Vidart's claims is the one that bullfighting has exercised a beneficent influence on literature! It is obvious, he declares, that Moratín owed his famous Fiesta de Toros en Madrid to the noble art of the toreo; unlike the misguided Ricardo de la Vega, and José Navarrete this last a renegade to his native land of Andalusia "—who have made it, not the altar of their inspiration, but the target for their ridicule.

Again and again these battles have been violent and lengthy. Velarde, in his Letters to Don José Navarrete, enemy of bullfighting,† boldly proclaims why a corrida is only possible in Spain: because in Spain, and Spain alone, is it possible to find a man sufficiently brave to face the reses bravas of Iberia. "What," inquires the pamphleteer, "would a foreigner do before a Miura bull? How would the graceful garments of the torero sit upon his clumsy body?"

Personally, I used to imagine that a Spaniard's body was very much the same in shape as that of any other mortal; and I am grateful to Señor Velarde for undeceiving me. Ye countrymen of Garibaldi, and Joan of Arc, and Nelson, and Garfield, and Charles the Bold-ye are vetoed from becoming bullfighters! Remember the prohibition; weep; Therefore your sangre torera must

and tremble!

* La España del Siglo XIX., Vol. III.

+ Toros y Chimborazos. Madrid, 1886.

limit itself to admiring the fervid energy of these militant pamphleteers. Divers are the pleas put forward by the aficionados in favour of the national sport: the advancement of literature, of agriculture, of courage, of morals, and, I doubt not, of religion. The indefatigable López Martínez--not the enchanting tiple of the Eslava Theatre, but a member of "the Superior Council of Agriculture "-adduces in favour of the lidia some singular observations.* He says that in 1878 there were in Spain thirty-seven million cattle, of which no more than twenty thousand were fighting - bulls. What loss, he infers, could the national agriculture suffer from so limited a reservation? Again, in the space of one hundred and twenty-seven years, there were killed in the plazas of the country, thirty-eight thousand fightingbulls, which sum, at an average cost of four thousand reales apiece, one hundred and fifty-two million reales. The same number of tame cattle would have fetched no more than fifty-seven million one hundred and fifty thousand reales: so that there is a balance in favour of the fighting-bulls of nearly ninety-five million reales. Ergo, the nation reaps a solid profit from the existence of ganado bravo. It will be seen that Señor López Martínez' knowledge of political economy is somewhat primitive, but his good intentions are undeniable. Elsewhere he includes eloquent statistics to prove that the provinces where there is most bullfighting produce no greater number of criminals than the remainder.

I

*Observaciones sobre las Corridas de Toros, y contra la Supresión oficial de las mismas. Madrid, 1878.