merits of Göttingen as an university are well known: the celebrated Blumenbach is still the ornament of this place. The ambition of Bonaparte destroyed the constitution of the German empire, and the Emperor of the West was compelled to assume the title of Austria only. The present constitution of Germany was settled at Vienna in 1815, when various principalities, which had previously been sovereign dominions, were incorporated with the Austrian empire, Prussia, Hanover, or others of the newly formed kingdoms, while the princes have sunk into the first class of nobility. The states, which were not sufficient to form a kingdom, were made Grand Duchies; and the ruler of Hesse Cassel is the only prince who now retains the title of elector. The diet of the confederation sits at Frankfort, and each sovereign prince, has a representative at that assembly. The confederation of the Rhine included only a few of the minor states; but the present confederation comprehends the whole of Germany. LETTERS FROM SPAIN, BY DON LEUCADIO DOBLADO. MR. EDITOR-The letter I have the honour to enclose was found by a friend of mine among some papers belonging to a lady, who had requested his assistance to arrange them. The packet contained two other long epistles, forming part, it should seem, of a considerable series, under the title of Letters from Spain, written between 1798 and 1810, by Don Leucadio Doblado. Knowing how intimately acquainted I had been with the writer, my friend obtained leave to make me a present of the manuscript, promising that he would endeavour to find the remainder, which, the lady was confident, had never been lent or destroyed. I trust that the entire series of Doblado's letters will be in my possession, before they are wanted for insertion. But I have laid before you the circumstances of the case, that you may either delay the publication, or take the chance of the first three letters being left to stand by themselves as a mere fragment. B. Seville, May, 1798. Dear Madam-I am inclinded to think with you, that a Spaniard, who, like myself, has resided many years in England, is, perhaps, the fittest person to write an account of life, manners, and opinions as they exist in this country, and to show them in the light which is most likely to interest an Englishman. The most acute and diligent travellers are subject to constant mistakes; and perhaps the more so, for what is generally thought a circumstance in their favour-a moderate knowledge of foreign languages. A traveller who uses only his eyes, will confine himself to the description of external objects; and though his narrative may be deficient in many topics of interest, it will certainly be exempt from great and ludicrous blunders. The difficulty, which a person, with a smattering of the language of the country he is visiting, experiences every moment in the endeavour to communicate his own, and catch other men's thoughts, often urges him into a sort of mental rashness, which leads him to settle many a doubtful point for himself, and forget the unlimited power, I should have said tyranny, of usage, in whatever relates to language. I still recollect the unlucky hit I made on my arrival in London, when, anxious beyond measure to catch every idiomatic expression, and reading the huge inscription of the Cannon Brewery at Knightsbridge, as the building had some resemblance to the great cannon-foundery in this town, I settled it in my mind that the genuine English idiom, for what I now should call casting, was no other than brewing cannon. This, however, was a mere verbal mistake. Not so that which I made when the word nursery stared me in the face every five minutes, as in a fine afternoon I approached your great metropolis, on the western road. Luxury and wealth, said I to myself, in a strain approaching to philosophic indignation, have at last blunted the best feelings of nature among the English. Surely, if I am to judge from this endless string of nurseries, the English ladies have gone a step beyond the unnatural practice of devolving their first maternal duties upon domestic hirelings. Here, it seems, the poor helpless infants are sent to be kept and suckled in crowds, in a decent kind of Foundling Hospitals. You may easily guess that I knew but one signification of the words nursing and nursery. Fortunately I was not collecting materials for a book of travels during a summer excursion, otherwise I should now be enjoying all the honour of the originality of my remarks on the customs and manners of Old England. From similar mistakes I think myself safe enough in speaking of my native country; but I wish I could feel equal confidence as to the execution of the sketches you desire to obtain from me. I know you too well, dear Madam, to doubt that my letters will, by some chance or other, find their way to some of the London magazines, before they have been long in your hands. And only think, I entreat you, how I shall fret and fidget under the apprehension that some of your pert newspaper writers may fill up a whole column in some of their Suns or Stars, which, in spite of intervening seas and mountains, shall dart its baneful influence, and blast the character of infallibility, as an English scholar, which I have acquired since my return to Spain. I have so strongly Poor Don Leucadio! how mortified he would feel could he know that the letters to which he attributed so much importance, have lain forgotten for years, and that it will now cost me, his old friend, a world of trouble to give his posthumous work to the public! rivetted the admiration of the Irish merchants in this place, that, in spite of their objection to my not calling tea ta, they submit to my decision every intricate question about your provoking shall and will: and surely it would be no small disparagement, in this land of proud dons, to be posted up in a London paper as a murderer of the King's English. How fortunate was our famous Spanish traveller, my relative, Espriella* (for you know that there exists a family connexion between us by my mother's side) to find one of the best writers in England, willing to translate his letters! But since you will not allow me to write in my native language, and since, to say the truth, I feel a pleasure in using that which reminds me of the dear land which has been my second homethe land where I drew my first breath of liberty-the land which taught me how to retrieve, though imperfectly and with pain, the time which, under the influence of ignorance and superstition, I had lost in early youth-I will not delay a task which, should circumstances allow me to complete it, I intend as a token of friendship to you, and of gratitude and love to your country. Few travellers are equal to your countryman Mr. Townsend in the truth and liveliness of his descriptions, as well as in the mass of useful information and depth of remark, with which he has presented the public. It would be impossible for any but a native Spaniard to add to the collection of traits descriptive of the national character, which animates his narrative; and I must confess, that he has left me but little room for novelty in the selection of my topics. He has, indeed, fallen into such mistakes and inaccuracies, as nothing short of perfect familiarity with a country can prevent. But I may safely recommend him to you as a guide for a fuller acquaintance with the places whose inhabitants I intend to make the chief subject of my letters. But that I may not lay upon you the necessity of a constant reference, I shall begin by providing your fancy with a "local habitation" for the people whose habits and modes of thinking I will forthwith attempt to portray. The view of Cadiz from the sea, as, in a fine open day, you approach its magnificent harbour, is one of the most attractive beauty. The strong deep light of a southern sky, reflecting from the lofty buildings of white freestone, which face the bay, rivet the eye of the navigator from the very verge of the horizon. The sea actually washes the ramparts, except where,on the opposite side of the town, it is divided by a narrow neck of land, which joins Cadiz to the neighbouring continent. When, therefore, you begin to discover the upper part of the buildings, and the white pinnacles of glazed earthenware, resembling china, that ornament the parapets with which their flat roofs are crowned, the airy structure, melting at times into the distant glare of the waves, is more like a pleasing de * See Espriella's Letters from England. lusion-a kind of Fata Morgana-than the lofty, uniform massive buildings which, rising gradually before the vessel, bring you back, however unwilling, to the dull realities of life. After landing on a crowded quay, you are led the whole depth of the ramparts along a dark vaulted passage, at the farthest end of which new-comers are delivered into the hands of the inferior customhouse officers. Eighteen-pence slipped into their hands with the keys of your trunks, will spare you the vexation of seeing your clothes and linen scattered about you in the utmost disorder. I forgot to tell you, that scarcely does a boat with passengers approach the landing-stairs of the quay, when three or four Gallegos, natives of the province of Galicia, who are the only porters in this town, will take a fearful leap into the boat, and begin a scuffle, which ends by the stronger seizing upon the luggage. The successful champion becomes your guide through the town to the place where you wish to take your abode. As only two gates are used as a thoroughfare-the sea-gate, Puerta de la Mar, and the land-gate, Puerta de Tierra-those who come by water are obliged to cross the great market-a place not unlike Covent Garden, where the country people expose all sorts of vegetables and fruits for sale. Fish is also sold at this place, where you see it laid out upon the pavement in the same state as it was taken out of the net. The noise and din of this market are absolutely intolerable. All classes of Spaniards, not excluding the ladies, are rather loud and boisterous in their speech. But here is a contention between three or four hundred peasants, who shall make his harsh and guttural voice be uppermost, to inform the passengers of the price and quality of his goods. In a word, the noise is such as will astound any one, who has not lived for some years near Cornhill or Temple-Bar. Religion, or, if you please, superstition, is so intimately blended with the whole system of public and domestic life in Spain, that I fear I shall tire you with the perpetual recurrence of that subject. I am already compelled, by an involuntary train of ideas, to enter upon that endless topic. If, however, you wish to become thoroughly acquainted with the national character of my country, you must learn the character of the national religion. The influence of religion in Spain is boundless. It divides the whole population into two comprehensive classes, bigots and dissemblers. Do not, however, mistake me. I am very far from wishing to libel my countrymen. If I use these invidious words, it is not that I believe every Spaniard either a downwright bigot or a hypocrite: yet I cannot shut my eyes to the melancholy fact, that the system under which we live must unavoidably give, even the best among us, a taint of one of those vices. Where the law threatens every dissenter from such an encroaching system of divinity as that of the Church of Rome, with death and infamy-where every in dividual is not only invited, but enjoined, at the peril of both body and soul, to assist in enforcing that law, must not an undue and tyrannical influence accrue to the believing party? Are not such as disbelieve in secret, condemned to a life of degrading deference, or of heart-burning silence? Silence, did I say? No; every day, every hour, renews the necessity of explicitly declaring yourself what you are not. The most contemptible individual may, at pleasure, force out a lie from an honestly proud bosom. I must not, however, keep you any longer in suspense as to the origin of this flight-this unprepared digression from the plain narrative I had begun. You know me well enough to believe that, after a long residence in England, my landing at Cadiz, instead of cheering my heart at the sight of my native country, would naturally produce a mixed sensation, in which pain and gloominess must have had the ascendant. I had enjoyed the blessings of liberty for ten years; and now, alas! I perceived that I had been irresistibly drawn back by the holiest ties of affection, to stretch out my hands to the manacles, and bow my neck to that yoke, which had formerly galled my very soul. The convent of San Juan de Dios-(laugh, Madam, if you will: you may do so, who have never lived within range of any of these European jungles, where lurks every thing that is ravenous, beastly, and venomous*)-well, then, San Juan de Dios is the first remarkable object that meets the eye upon entering Cadiz by the sea gate. A single glance at the convent had awakened the strongest and most rooted aversions of my heart, when, just as I was walking into the nearest street to avoid the crowd, the well remembered sound of a hand-bell made me instantly aware that, unless pretending not to hear it, I could retrace my steps, and turn another corner, I should be obliged to kneel in the mud till a priest, who was carrying the consecrated wafer to a dying person, had moved slowly in his sedan chair from the farthest end of the street to the place where I began to hear the bell. The rule, on these occasions, is expressed in a proverbial saying -al Rey, en viendolo; a Dios, en oyendolo-which, after sup I wish my friend Don Leucadio had qualified this passage, for the sake of a few worthy individuals, who, to my knowledge, were to be found among the regular clergy of Spain. As to the convent, which brought on this paroxysm of my friend's constitutional malady-the monachophobia, it is but justice to say, that the order of San Juan de Dios is, perhaps, the only one in which real usefulness predominates. Every convent of that order is an hospital, where the friars give their attendance to the sick poor, either as physicians or helpers. The last do all the service which in England is left to nurses. The only mischief of this institution lies in binding, with perpetual vows, those whom charity calls, in their youth, to this labour of love. Were this part of the monastic rule repealed or modified, I will take upon myself to assert, that Don Leucadio himself would join with me in wishing well to those good friars-(though I must add, to them alone); for among my old friend's faults, I could never discover a single grain of hard-heartedness. |