The same luxury appears in the carriages. There is a great number of coaches, and many of them very elegant. The physicians have a peculiar kind of carriage of a ridiculous appearance.

Luxury, however, does not extend to the interior of the houses: the furniture is simple; tapestry and carpets are very rare. We see none of those glasses or clocks, none of those diversified pieces of furniture which embellish our apartments; no elegant chimneys, girandoles, chandeliers, bronzes, and china ornaments; the walls are bare, or at most lightly paint. ed with some festoons; the floors are matted; the chairs are straw. bottomed; and their large lustres, which constitute the principal ornaments of their rooms, are of white glass.

The women are tolerably handsome; their persons, which are above the middle size, are slim and light: they have large fine eyes, and a whiter skin than is commonly met with in Spain.

Character, Manners, Customs; and Habits of the Spaniards in general. [From the same.]

The Spaniards are usually represented as lean, dry, meagre, and of a yellow and swarthy complexion. They are not indeed of the gross habit usually observed in the inhabitants of the north; but their thinness is neither excessive nor disagrecable; it is suit able to their stature. Their complexion is swarthy in some pro. vinces; those, for instance, of the south; it is so also, but in a less degree, in the Castiles, though

a shade brighter in New than in Old Castile. It inclines to yellow or olive in the kingdom of Murcia, but white skins are still very com. mon in Spain, especially amongst women and children.

The general appearance of the Spaniards is usually very good; the shape delicate, the head beantiful, the countenance intelligent; their eyes are quick and animated, their features regular, their teeth

even.

The Castilians appear delicate, but they are strong. The Galicia's are large, nervous, robust, and able endure fatigue. The inhabitants of Estramadura are strong, stout, and well made, but more swarthy than any other Spaniards. The Andalusiaus are light, slender, and perfectly well proportioned. The Murcians are gloomy, indolent, and heavy; their complexion is pale, and often almost lead-coloured.

The Valencians are delicate, slight, and effeminate; but in telligent and active in labour. The Catalans are nervous, strong, active, intelligent, indefatigable, and above the middling stature, The Aragonese are tall and well made; as robust, but less active than the Catalans. The Biscay. ans are strong, vigorous, agile, and gay; their complexion is fine, their expression quick, animated, laughing and open; the Roman historians describe them as brave, robust, endowed with constancy and a firmness not to be shaken; fierce in their disposition, singular in their customs; always armed with daggers, and ready to give themselves death rather than suffer themselves to be subjugated of governed by force; roused to op position by obstacles, and patient

cf

of labours and fatigue. In fact the Calabrians were the Spanish people who longest resisted the arms of the Roman republic.

The Spanish women here deserve a separate article; compared with the men, they seem to form a dif. ferent nation.

The females of Spain are natural. ly beautiful, and owe nothing to art. The greater part are brown; the few that are fair are chiefly to be found in Biscay. They are in general well proportioned, with a slender and delicate shape, small feet, well-shaped legs, a face of a fine oval, black or rich brown hair, a mouth neither large nor small, but agreeable, red lips; white and well-set teeth, which they do not long preserve, however, owing to the little care they take of them. They have large and open eyes, usually black or dark hazel, delicate and regular features, a peculiar suppleness, and a charming natural grace in their motions, with a pleasing and expressive gesture. Their countenances are open, and full of truth and intelligence; their look is gentle, animated, cxpressive; their smile agreeable; they are naturally pale, but this paleness seems to yanish under the brilliancy and expressive lustre of their eyes. They are full of graces, which appear in their discourse, in their looks, their gestures, in all their motions, and every thing that they do. They have usually a kind of embarrassed and heedless manner, which does not fail, how ever, to seduce, even more than wit and talents. Their countenance is modest, but expressive. There is a certain simplicity in all they do, which sometimes gives them a rustic, and sometimes a bold,

air, but the charm of which is in expressible. As soon as they get a little acquainted with you, and have overcome their first embarrassment, they express themselves with ease; their discourse is full of choice expressions, at once deli. cate and noble; their conversation is lively, easy, and possesses a natural gaiety peculiar to themselves. They seldom read and write, but the little that they read they profit by, and the little that they write is correct and concise. They are of a warm disposition; their passions are violent, and their imagination ardent, but they are generous, kind, and true, and capable of sincere attachment.

With them, as with the women of other countries, love is the chief business of life; but with them it is a deep feeling, a passion, and not, as in some other parts, an effect of self-love, of vanity, of coquetry, or of the rivalries of society. When the Spanish women love, they love deeply and long; but they also require a constant assiduity, and a complete depend. ence. Naturally reserved and modest, they are then jealous and impetuous. They are capable of making any sacrifices; but they also exact them. On these occasions they discover all the energy of their character; and the women of no other nation can compare with them in this point. The Castilian women excel all the rest in love. There are many shades of difference in the manner in which this passion is displayed by the fe males of different provinces. Those of Castile have most tenderness and sensibility; the Biscayans are more ardent; the Valentians and Catalans more impetuous; the Aragonese

Aragonese most exacting and im perious; the Andalusian women most adroit and seducing; but the general disposition is nearly the same in all.

There is a freedom in the manners and conversation of the Spa. nish women, which causes them to be judged unfavourably of by strangers; but on further acquain. tance, a man perceives that they appear to promise more than they grant, and that they do not even permit those freedoms which most women of other countries think there is no harm in allowing. A modern traveller, who is some. times severe, often hasty in his judgments, has anticipated me in this remark; but he deduces from it an inference unfavourable to the Spanish women. "Feeling," says he, "their own weakness, and knowing how inflammable they are, they are distrustful of themselves, and fear they should yield too easily." This is supposing them very a bandoned, and very calculating, and they are neither one nor the other. This reserve belongs to their notions and manners; it sometimes proceeds from the embarrassment of which we have spoken, and oftener from their ideas of love, which forbid them to grant their favours by halves, or to employ that coquetry so common among the women of other countries.

If the Spanish ladies are agrecable, if they are sometimes well-in. formed, they owe it only to them selves, and in no degree to their education, which is almost totally neglected. If their native quali. ties were polished and unfolded by a careful instruction, they would

become but too seductive.

4

Many different people have oecupied Spain in succession: the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Suevi, the Alani, the Vandals, the Arabs, and the French; and with all these the natives have been confounded.

Towards the end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth centu ry, four principal nations inhabit ed the country: the natives, then known by the name of Romans; the Goths, comprehending the re. mains of the Suevi, Alani, and Vandals, a portion of whom were also confounded with the natives and with the Moors, whilst a con. siderable part had taken refuge in the Asturias and in Navarre; the Moors, with whom the natives of Africa were mingled; and the French, who occupied a great part of Catalonia, Navarre, and the Pyrences. Each of these nations brought with it its own genius, manners, laws, and customs,

When the Moors were driven out of Spain, several independant sovereignties were formed; each of which had its own laws, cus toms, constitution, and particular form of government. Galicia, Leon, the Castiles, Biscay, Na varre, Aragon, and Catalonia, had each its own sovereign. Andalusia, Murcia, and Valencia, were peopled by a mixture of different nations. Hence resulted a diver sity in genius, temper, manners, and customs; and this diversity, though modified by the present uniformity of government, by the more intimate communication between different provinces and their inhabitants, and by the as similation of general customs, left to each country a peculiar tinge, of which vestiges, more or less dis

tinct

tinct, may still be traced. The national characters are not yet destroyed; they pass through the aniformity which government endeavours to introduce, and which imitation and example cause to be insensibly adopted.

There are no two provinces of which the manners and character are exactly alike. In travelling through France, one is surprised to find there the ruling character of some parts of Spain; the Biscayan may be compared to the Basque; the Catalan to the Provencal; the Valencian to the native of Lower Languedoc; the Galician to the Auvergnese; the Andalusian to the Gascon.

Some customs, however, and some traits of character, run through all the provinces. The national pride is every where the same. The Spani. ard has the highest opinion of his nation and himself, which he ener getically expresses by his gestures, words, and actions. This opinion is discovered in all ranks of life, and classes of society; in crimes and in virtues; amongst the great and the small; under the rags of poverty as much as in the royal palace. Its result is a kind of haughtiness, repulsive sometimes to him who is its object, but useful in giving to the mind a sentiment of nobleness and 'self-esteem, which fortifies it against all meanness. This pride may be considered as one cause of the great number of persons who quit the world, and embrace the ecclesiastical profession: the slight est contempt, the least constraint, often produce, on these haughty dispositions, the effect of real misfortune.

sentiment, which is certainly su perior to the pride of birth. It is often stigmatized as pride, because we are pleased so to call spirit in those classes in which we are accustomed to find a base humility. We cannot bear that a muletcer should answer us; that a peasant should refuse to sell us what we wish to buy, because he keeps it for his family; we are astonished that, immovably attached to his own habits, he should be regard. less of our expostulations and our anger;-that he should think himself as good as we, and show that he does so but, if we see in this man, instead of any thing base, a native greatness of mind;--instead of intemperance, a sobriety of which we should be incapable;instead of that luxury and vanity which amongst us is not incompatible with poverty, and indifference to the indul.encies of life carried to as high a pitch as the austerity of the ancient republics; if we observe in him, instead of bad faith, of the instinct of theft and avidity, disinterestedness, honour, and fidelity;-instead of impu dence, reserve and respect;-and instead of impiety, a fervent faith; we shall no longer be surprised to see men of the lowest class under. stand the pleasures of solitude, seek them at the price of the severest trials, and form to themselves a mode of life at once simplead sublime, made up of labour and prayer, nature and heaven.

The national pride of the Spaniards is commonly attributed to their success in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. "The Spa

3 E

which,

which, notwithstanding the reverses that the nation has sustained, the modern Spaniard continues to act the part of his ancestors." This is a mistake, the Spaniard has always been the same: historians depict him as haughty, boastful, filled with self-esteem, and disdainful of other nations. His native disposition was kept down under the yoke of the people who subdued him; but it broke forth with full force the moment he recovered his liberty. The Spaniard of the twelfth century was the same with the Spaniard of the eighteenth. The Spaniards are brave: they have always been so: from the most remote ages they have evinced the most steady and intrepid valour. Thucydides, Diodo rus Siculus, Livy, Strabo, and Lucius Florus, represent them as the most warlike of the barbarians; as brave in battle; patient of the fatigues of war; bold and as valiant as the Romans. They were vanquished by Hannibal, on the banks of the Tagus, only because they wanted a head; under the conduct of Hannibal, they van. quished the Romans on the banks of the Rhone: they often beat them when they fought under the command of Veriatus and Sertorius: they long resisted them in the Can. tabrian war. The famous defence of Saguntum, and that of Numan. tia, would suffice to immortalise Spanish valour: the first resisted, during eight months, an army of 150.000 Carthaginians, and chose rather to bury itself under its own ruins than surrender; the last sustained, during fourteen years, the utmost efforts of the Roman power; triumphed several times over the armies of the republic;

twice compelled her generals to sue for peace; and only yielded, at length, through famine, and the small number of her defenders, leaving nothing to her conquerors but heaps of ruins, ashes, and dead bodies. Even the women have sometimes displayed à manly cou. Bage. In the Cantabrian war, un. der the Romans, mothers were seen to put their own children to death, that they might not see them fall into the hands of their enemies.

In later times the Spaniards had not degenerated from the valour of their ancestors. They evinced the same energy against the Moors: a handful of Spaniards was often seen to encounter innumerable hosts of Arabs; to defeat them, put them to the rout, and reconquer from them a wide extent of country. The valour and reputation of the Spanish infantry, under Ferdinand V. and his successors, are known to all Europe. The names of Al mansa, of Villaviciosa, Bitonto, Codogno, Veletri, Camposanto, Parma, Beunos-Ayres, the Havan. nah, Port-Mahon, and Oran, are famous in the history of the eigh teenth century: the plains of Ca talonia and Biscay have become no less so in the present war. These places have been the theatre in which the Spaniards have shown to all Europe that they were wor thy the reputation of their fathers.

The Spanish soldier is still one of the best in Europe,, when pla ced under an experienced general. and brave and intelligent officers: he is possessed of a cool and steady valour: he long resists fatigue, and easily inures himself to labour; lives on a little, endures hunger without complaining; executes the

orders