The Spaniard's disregard of danger and misfortune, his love of radiant sunshine and gay colours, his admiration for a showy act of skill, or daring, or both together, all this is embodied in the bullfight, and has ever been so. In the ensuing paragraphs we shall remark how the national craving for entertainment, chiefly in the form of the bullfights in the Plaza Mayor, became at one time a positive and deadly disease. Is all this at an end? Why, it was on my way from the bull-ring that I-and thousands upon thousands of the Madrileños -first learned of the disaster to the Spanish fleet at Cavite. There was a good deal of crowding about the notice board, and a transitory outcry of anxiety and dismay; but the general interest was obviously concentrated, not on the vessels shot to pieces oversea so much as on the death of the last bull!

Four hundred years ago Spain reached the zenith of her grandeur. Never was she so rich or happy as on the winter morning when her banner floated from the pinnacles of the Alhambra, and the mighty work of the Reconquest stood apparently complete. Ages of war had ended in the final triumph of the Spaniards. The last and loveliest portion of their territory had fallen back into their power; the rest of their dominions had been welded by the marriage of their princes. Their queen was as a mother to them; their king had led them on to victory. One might indeed have thought that as the national armies knelt in prayer beneath those glad Granada skies, their only prospect was to strip at last the harness from their back and break the sword across their knee, living thenceforth in peace.

and brotherhood with all the world, and cherishing the land a grateful heaven had restored to them.

But in an evil hour the Admiral's caravels survived their fateful voyage. In an evil hour Ferdinand the Catholic married his crazy daughter to Philip the Handsome of the Netherlands, and set about his needless wars in Italy; and in the evillest hours of all Philip the Third and his contemptible son succeeded to the vast and agitated kingdom of the Spainsmonarchs whose criminal neglect contributed more than any other factor to bring about a monstrous poverty and backsliding of their people.

The baneful effect on Spain's affairs of the discovery of the New World has never been sufficiently examined, or at least exposed. From delicate motives of admiration for a great seaman-for it was only on shipboard that Columbus' talents were by any means supreme-historians and economists have charitably held their tongues. But just as Spain had been the first to discover the New World, so was she the first to suffer the tremendous consequences of the discovery. She found herself face to face with the abrupt necessity of becoming a great financial power. Having no alternative-short of relinquishing her dazzling gains-other than to tackle this necessity, she did her best, and was badly beaten. C'est le premier pas qui coûte. So was it the first seceder from the common track of European warfare and domestic statecraft who had to pay the ruinous penalty of her experiment, and other nations such as the Netherlands and England, who subsequently forged ahead in the stupendous enterprise of seizing, governing and retaining colonies,

were warned in time to profit by the lesson of their rival.

Once the New World was discovered at all, it is difficult to believe that Spain, given her peculiar history and characteristics, could have done much better than she actually did, for the problem presented to her presented to a people vigorous, military, valiant, and active, but highly imaginative and illusionable, and the merest infants in the sciences of commerce, economics, and finance-was a problem to have taxed, if not confounded, the experience and matured skill of any twentieth century administration.

The earlier efforts of Castile on behalf of her colonies were crude, but praiseworthy in motive. To some extent she civilized, improved, and set in order. In this the guiding influence of Isabella is clearly visible. But the keen scrutiny of the Sovereigns, which interpenetrated every nook and cranny of Spain, failed to extend beyond the seas. Legends of "the Lord of the Golden House" and other fabulously rich caciques began their fatal work among a people whose impressionable temper and warm imagination have always needed a rigid, even if it were an affectionate control. That control was now removed. The Admiral's authority was disputed, partly from deficiencies in his rule, partly because he was a foreigner, partly because his brothers meddled in prerogatives and powers which were his alone, and rendered him increasingly unpopular. He was succeeded in the government of Hispaniola by a fool, Bobadilla, and by a butcher, Ovando. The colony grew to be a hotbed of discord

and intrigue; and the difficulty Ferdinand and Isabella experienced in dealing with it is patent from the anxious language of their Indian Ordinances, while their harsh treatment of Columbus was the outcome, not of partiality or injustice, but of confusion.

Notwithstanding, so long as the Catholic Sovereigns lived, the worst continued in abeyance. They were succeeded by a ruler whose manners were Flemish rather than Castilian. Of all his dominions he seems to have valued Spain the least, save as his moneychest. Together with his ascent to the throne all hope of educating or humanizing the natives or colonists of the New World was irrecoverably lost. Charles, indeed, though easy-tempered when unopposed, was no humanitarian. As a soldier, the Spaniards admired him, being themselves a nation of warriors; but they never loved him. They had been the cherished, almost the spoiled children of Isabella : they were her grandson's merest vassalage.

The Emperor did much to cripple and debase the Spanish character. He was the first of those autocrats who helped to ruin the commonwealth by encroaching upon its actual rights. Ferdinand and Isabella had curbed the arrogance of the nobles, but the civil and popular liberties were scrupulously respected. Charles trod the latter underfoot upon the field of Villalar, and the temper of the people, crushed by the iron heel of the despot, became at once more selfish and more sly.

The colonists who flocked to the New World, infected with this general vitiation, changed also for the worse. A lower, meaner class of men set sail