religious sentiments as a pretext for bringing about a civil war. This matter of the religious associations is too important to be settled offhand and in a radical manner. . It must be treated with great reserve and nicety. It can be arranged SO as to benefit everybody without resorting to those radical measures demanded by a few impetuous persons." Here is the same cautious language to which the leader of the Spanish Liberals is notoriously addicted, only it is a little more cautious than usual. It does not, in fact, appear to commit him to any course at all. But the moment is undoubtedly arriving when Señor Sagasta, or else the inheritors of his policy, must do or die. For the nation is convinced at last that it is necessary to build up a new Spain, uniting much of the old material, valuable in itself, but which, under the infliction of heavy and repeated blows, has fallen asunder; and it is also necessary to discard such of this old material as is manifestly rotten and unserviceable, and introduce new fabrics in its stead. It is a great and good work to uphold the moral authority of the Church; but it is also a great and good work to feed the hungry and educate the ignorant. In spite of the Silvelist and Sagastan optimism, I would opine that the educational food provided by the Spanish priesthood is somewhat too ghostly to nourish the intelligence, as well as too expensive to suit the pocket, of a latter-day Spaniard. He would be a happier as well as a robuster Catholic if, in addition to filling his conscience with a due regard for the infallibility of his preceptors, Y it helped to fill his mouth with solid bread and butter. More than a year has slipped away since the Ubao case; and I write these closing paragraphs within a few hours after Don Alfonso the Thirteenth has attained his majority and solemnly sworn to uphold the Spanish Constitution. If heredity goes for anything he should make a popular and sensible monarch, uniting his father's amiability with his mother's tact and intelligence. As yet we can only conjecture, although his studious and inquisitive disposition and gentle manners promise not a little. Nominally, his earliest acts have been the celebration of a military review, and the publication, in somewhat tumid terms, of an address to his army and navy; but it is clear from the wording of this document that the young King is no more its author than I am the author of the Letters of Junius. He has merely appended his signature. Doubtless, as time progresses, he will prefer his own initiative to that of interested parties, and appreciate more directly the peaceable and commercial aspirations of his people. Some of the influences in the present condition of Spain are contradictory and conflicting. She is not a bankrupt power. She does not seem to be a moribund power. But it is undeniable that she is in a state of prostration. Her infirmity may be likened, not to those attending on old age, but to a sickness suffered during the prime of life, or even earlier. For this very reason a valid judgment becomes more difficult to pronounce; for while in the case of a patient sinking under natural decline one may predict with confidence impending dissolution, in the case of younger patients, valetudinarians whose strength is fairly battling with disease, it is only the very skilled, or else the very rash observer, who will adventure any opinion at all. Personally, I am not a little hopeful as to Spain's recovery. Her resources have been taxed, but not exhausted. Her suffering is great; but her vigor seems equal to resisting it. Indeed, it is astounding to consider what she has already survived. I have briefly exemplified the hideous malady which tormented her, with but little intermission, for over three hundred and fifty years. The Hapsburg dynasty and everything about it was rotten and pernicious. Kings were bad, ministers were bad, priests were bad, and the common people, by force of example, were bad also, though less so than their rulers. Nevertheless, it would be hard to find a peasantry so virile, so stalwart, so capable of being made into a grand people, as the Spaniards. The inhabitants of the various regions are in many respects dissimilar; but with hardly an exception they possess a dignity and nobleness of spirit, a sobriety in their living, and a soundness of natural intelligence, from all of which the nation ought at last to fashion and consolidate her lasting welfare. If, whenever those eight reforms are introduced, the commonwealth refuses to support them, I shall have been mistaken. At least, in making these closing observations I have set aside to the utmost all personal or racial prejudice. I trust that my researches in Spanish life and history have em |