grain, and grass admeasured by the yard, like so much ribbon. Wherever you look or step, you are constrained by truculent notice-boards and watchdogs, by turnstiles and padlocked gates, and fences horrid with barbed wire, by thorny hedges and treacherous haw-haws, by bailiffs and mantraps, and gamekeepers with loaded guns and unfraternal language. Tread where you choose, move where you may, your skin is in perpetual jeopardy. You will be shot, or bitten, or fall into a ditch, or be fined by frowning justices.

But in nearly all of the Peninsula you are the temporary lord of what you see. You may strike a line due north or south, from Avila to Burgos, or Madrid to the Sierra Morena; not a soul will ask your business, never a wall or fence arrest you; and even if your way lies through the thicklier peopled districts, you may be stared at, or maybe interrogated, but you will never be repelled. The Spaniards, in a word, are, once you learn their language, the most complaisant of all mortals.

"Their manners are more gentle kind than of
Our human generation you shall find

Many, nay, almost any."

The Basques, to cite a single instance, are the noblest-hearted and most obliging fellows in the world, and to make these qualities more enjoyable, their country, worthy of its spirited occupants, is beautiful beyond description. The five hours' journey from Zumárraga to Bilbao must haunt your memory for ever. The train-half train, half tram—with the seats of the third-class coaches ranged lengthways,

and a little open platform abutting on them, winds amid chain upon chain of imposing mountains, verdureclad and reaching their highest with the peak of the Gorbea near Durango. The engine curls to right and left alternately, and emerging at length from leveller expanses and the slopes of the lesser foothills, wheels higher and higher, piping shrilly and bearing you upwards on its vigorous frame like Sinbad in the clutches of the roc. Precipice and gorge, gorge and precipice, succeed each other with dizzy suddenness. Each curve reveals a new and startling prospect; but far beneath you may continually espy some tranquil valley yellow with wheat, where women and men, bending over the harvest in merry comradeship, pause to wave their hands as the train screams by and overhead of them. The brushwood is dense and lovely, the meadows are greener than those of England, and the houses along the wayside are picturesque and venerable-not spruce and whitewashed like those of Andalusia, but of a tawny or gray stone that appears to have turned colour from very age. Their shape is not dissimilar to that of the Swiss chalets, and a wooden staircase commonly runs outside from the basement to the only storey. No dwellings I have seen have looked so old as these; yet they have nothing of the ramshackle or tumbledown. They seem to have grown solidly and bodily into the crests and bosoms of the hills, becoming an inseparable and essential part of nature.

In other quarters of the world a railway station is a squalid and detestable spot, a Styx over which we must perforce be ferried in order to migrate from one place to another. But here, in the Basque

provinces, it is nothing of the kind. It is the fashionable promenade. The aristocracy of the neighbourhood pace the platform; the marriageable maidens. dressed in their finest and raking the train windows with their bright eyes in search of sweethearts. I thoroughly endorse this custom, which revolutionizes railway stations. Nobody seems to be bent upon any definite errand, or to travel from a sense of obligation. Nothing is to be descried of frantic passengers struck on the shins by top-heavy trucks misguided by a groaning porter, or of importunate and vociferous newsboys, or door-slamming guards with whistles. Only a score or so of smiling damsels tripping arm-in-arm, some four or five abreast, like a picket of pacific Amazons. The train pauses, as it were, to glance at them, and then resume its fantastic journey. Who would not wish all railway stations to be the same?

Bilbao, capital of that favoured region, is typical of the Basques. Its pride is stamped upon the walls of its public buildings as indelibly as features on a face-the Church of San Nicolás, the Ayuntamiento, and so forth. It is a busy city; but its business is conducted genteelly, without hurrying, and the streets, though traversed by abundant traffic, wear a dignified and sober aspect; while the ría-as the river is called-also dignified and slow of step, is specked with vessels winding gracefully, but slowly, to and from the sea, twelve miles away. I was struck by the absence of hackney carriages. Requiring one to carry me out to dinner, grave faces met me, and doubting looks and whispers. The management of my hotel united in

solemn conclave. At last the hostess, who figured as
chairwoman, informed me that a coach could be
ordered, but would cost me very dear. "Oho!" I
replied," and what is very dear?" "Why, three pesetas
at the
very least." "Well," I rejoined, "three pesetas
it must be;" and the coach was bespoken. Within
a half-hour it arrived, and not one but three domestics,
and finally the landlady, rapped at my door to remind
me that it was waiting. I descended the stairs
tardily, between reproachful-looking files of chamber-
maids, and found the coach in the street, surrounded
by an eager knot of worshippers, as though it were
a fetish. Though not so considerable as the struc-
tures described by the Countess D'Aulnoy a couple
of centuries ago, it resembled the family coaches of
history or tradition, and would have accommodated,
without squeezing, the entire progeny of a biblical
patriarch, or of Bishop Potts of Salt Lake City.
It was harnessed to a pair of venerable mules, gar-
nished with ribbons and festooned with tinkling bells.
The driver, a centenarian or thereabouts, stood by
the door; indeed, he appeared to have been born upon
the vehicle, or in it, or under it, and to have never
stirred away from it ever since. He held the door
open for me civilly, but with the air of one conferring
a favour. His manner and gestures were so noble
that I quailed before him. It seemed an infamy

to chaffer with this hidalgo over a cab fare; but
just as I prepared to enter, my mercenary British.
temperament got the better of me. "One moment,"
I cried. "What will you charge to drive me to
the Gran Via ?" "Three pesetas," he replied
frigidly. The price, corroborating my hostess' pro-

phecy, was not extravagant-a little less than halfa-crown; but as I mounted, my conscience smote me pungently. I had demeaned myself before this nobleman, and once the door was closed I drew down the blinds and buried my face, abashed, among the ample cushions.

As for those royal deserts of Castile, I love them. heart and soul. Their splendid desolation and Bohemian beauty form a spirited interruption in sordid city life, or the dull banality of cultivated landscapes. Even if you descry a castle on a hill it is a ruin, a mere "worm-eaten hold of rugged stone." A bird or so, bound God knows whither-it seems into another world, so vast is the horizon-sweeps songlessly across their surface; or where at intervals a patch of land is tilled, a corn crop waves refreshingly, and thereabout a group of hinds are bending to their faenas agrícolas. You spy them from afar, as busy and as small as ants. They may be chattering and laughing, but their voices perish in the limitless ether long before they reach you. Or else an arriero goes by upon his beast, dangling his legs across the alforja. A careless picture he. His broad-brimmed hat is over both his eyes. Verily he sleeps in the saddle; and should he troll a guttural copla, it filters through the infinite, and reaching you in whispering music resolves itself into your lullaby as soothingly as his.

I find no other epithet or phrase to illustrate these glorious wastes, for none will fit. I am describing vacancy, and that is why I love them, for in a world where much is cheap as dirt, is it not pleasant to stumble on a little nothing. So thought