is entering a new territory. Railways have made international intercourse easy. Commerce has made it profitable. Fashion has made it popular. Germans flock to Paris for business or pleasure. Frenchmen flock to the Rhine, to Baden, to Switzerland, for health or recreation. Italy attracts its yearly crowds of artists, antiquarians, students, and holiday-makers. National peculiarities are thus rubbed off. The various countries of Europe become assimilated to one another. The infinite variety of dress, manners, and customs which used to give such a charm to foreign travel is rapidly disappearing, and European society is being reduced to a dead level, to a monotonous uniformity. But Spain has resisted the influence far more than other countries. It is only recently that railways have invaded her territory. roads were so impassable and her hotels so execrable that there was little to attract the ordinary tourist. It needed some courage to encounter the horrors of a Spanish venta, and not a little physical endurance to survive the dislocating jolts of a Spanish diligence. She had no external commerce to lead her own sons abroad or to invite foreigners to settle within her borders. The extension of railways, and the growing commerce of Spain will sooner or later assimilate the Peninsula to the rest of Europe. But at present Europe ends at the Pyrenees.

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And Spain resembles Africa or the East in those very points in which she differs from the rest of Europe. The soil has that dry and sterile look with which African travellers are familiar. One may travel for hours over tracts of country in which there is scarcely a living thing to disturb the solitude; leagues upon leagues of bare rock without a particle of soil clinging to their sides; vast undulating plains, treeless and waterless; districts, each as large as an English county, covered with blocks of granite or limestone, like the desert of Sinai. Geologically, as well as in appearance, Spain is but a northern extension of the Sahara. Those who visit Spain, expecting to find exuberant fertility, will be disappointed. There are indeed huertas, which produce their three or four crops a year, and repay the slightest amount of labour by harvests of incredible richness. But these seem like oases in an arid waste. Probably less than one half of the soil is under cultivation. Certainly the general aspect of the country is that of utter sterility and barrenness.

This impression is rendered yet more intense by the numerous wadys, or dry river-beds, which are everywhere met with. Sometimes they are quite dry, and not a drop of water flows down them except during winter storms. More commonly the stream which once filled up a wide channel has shrunk into a streamlet, which trickles amongst the stones and sand-banks in the middle of its channel. It is said that the French troops on entering Madrid in triumph, and seeing the dry bed of the Manzanares, exclaimed, "What, has the river run away too!" This is partly occasioned by the diminished rainfall, partly by the water being drawn off for purposes of irrigation. Rivers which were once navigable to a considerable distance inland can now scarcely float a barge.

SPANISH VEGETATION.

The Guadalquivir, for instance, in the time of the Romans was available for ships as high as Cordova; it now only affords a difficult and shallow channel up to Seville. The wide, stony, sandy channels of these shrunken streams add to the desolate aspect of the country.

The vegetation, too, especially of the south of Spain, is African rather than European. Hedges of cactus and prickly pear, thickets of pomegranates in the open fields, plantations of sugar-cane, groves of oranges, and tall feathery palm-trees, give a strange tropical aspect to the scenery. At Elche on the east coast, for instance, it is difficult to believe oneself in Europe. Here are groves of palm trees in wild luxuriance. Flat-roofed Moorish houses stand

amidst the giant stems and overarching branches of the forest, which stretches away into the distance as far as the eye can reach. The scene is that of Barbary or of Egypt, and the traveller needs constantly to remind himself that he is in Europe-not in Africa.

The towns and villages, especially in the south of Spain, retain much of their Moorish character. The Moors themselves were indeed ruthlessly banished or burned by the Inquisition. But they have left their mark behind them. It could indeed scarcely be otherwise. After holding the country for

eight centuries, the traces of their occupation cannot be easily effaced. In Toledo, in Cordova, in Granada, or in the older parts of Seville it would be easy to believe oneself in a Moorish or Egyptian town. The narrow streets are enclosed by high walls, almost windowless, and perforated by only a single low door. Everything looks gloomy and sombre. But peep through the iron grating which protects the doorway, and you will see a patio, bright with flowers, and fountains, and greenery. The windows of the chambers open into this quadrangle, and the inmates can enjoy light and air, bright sunshine and cool shade, without leaving the seclusion of their homes, or being exposed to the gaze of any not belonging to the family. This style of architecture has been handed down directly from the Moors.

And in numberless details of dress and daily life the same influence may be traced. The mantilla which forms the head-dress of almost every woman in Spain is simply a relic of the veil universally worn by the wives and daughters of the Moslem. Wander into the outskirts of any town in Spain, and you will hardly fail to stumble upon groups of ragged, picturesque varlets, lying at full length upon some sunny bank, sunning themselves, just as a group of Bedouins would do. Go out into the country, and you will hear the creaking of the waterwheel, and see the patient oxen, treading their ceaseless round, turning the ponderous machine, which has come down unchanged from the days of the Moors. The peasants of Andalusia, Murcia, and Granada are seldom to be seen without a long staff, which they grasp and carry exactly as an Arab does his spear. The velvet hat of the Spanish majo is clearly a reminiscence of the turban. In private houses, hotels, and cafés, servants are summoned by clapping the hands as in the "Arabian Nights."

But it is doubtless the stagnation and apathy of Spain to which the French proverb chiefly refers. And this cannot fail to impress every traveller. In Madrid there is indeed a certain amount of life and bustle on the surface; for the highest ambition of every Madrileño seems to be to make his city as much like Paris as possible. But Parisian civilisation and activity are merely a thin veneer. Beneath the surface, and in all matters of business, Madrid is as slow and stagnant as ever. Some of the towns on the east coast, Barcelona and Valencia for instance, are awakening to a keener and more active life. Their proximity to Marseilles brings them into intimate connection with that port, and they have derived a considerable amount of French vivacity from this source. There is likewise an extensive British and American trade. springing up, and the bustle and energy of commerce are arousing the drowsy population from their stupor. But the change is only beginning. not had time to penetrate below the surface, and the surrounding country is altogether untouched by it. The Rambla at Barcelona might be the boulevard of a French town, but the side streets are purely Spanish and oriental in their character. Spain, as a whole, strikes one as being at least two centuries behind the rest of Europe, and little effort is made to recover the lost ground. To

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