dered in the wood of Vera by the bandit followers of the savage priest Echeverria; these, and fifty similar instances, are events but of yesterday. It is still fresh in the memory of the Madrileños how they pursued the stern Quesada to his place of refugeQuesada who, alone and by his single energy, had cleared the streets of an excited populace, and stopped a revolution for one whole day; how they dragged him forth, piecemeal it may almost be said, and with his severed fingers stirred the bowl in which they toasted the downfall of tyrants. Between Quesada and Narvaez there is more than one point of resemblance. Their deaths, also, may be alike.

The sketches of Spanish political men, the various party leaders and conspicuous senators of the day, are done with much spirit and cleverness, and give an excellent idea of the fickle inconsistency, the showy talent but want of steadiness of purpose, that characterize most of the notable Peninsular politicians. One is much accustomed to receive information upon such subjects with doubt and mistrust, it being so often tinctured with the violent party spirit which, in Spain, distorts men's views and opinions; and the book before us being published anonymously, we are prevented from judging, by circumstances of position or others, to which side cr men, if to any, the author is likely to incline. But we think we discern in him the

wish to be impartial, and are therefore disposed to place unusual confidence in his statements; the more so as he represents no character as entirely bad, but, while laying on the lash for their faults, does not forget to give them credit for their good qualities. According to his account, Lopez is the most brilliantly eloquent, and, at the same time, one of the most incorrupt members of the Spanish Chambers; one of the very few Spaniards who have held office without advantage to themselves.

"It is a most creditable distinction in Spain, where office is sought almost exclusively for its emoluments, that Lopez has been at three different times a minister of the crown, and retired thrice from that government, of which he was always the most influential member, without any permanent office, or

title, or decoration; without even a cross or a riband to display upon his breast, in a country where those favours are most extensively distributed. Even from the premiership of the provisional government, by which high titles and orders were lavishly disseminated amongst the leading instruments of a successful national movement, and from the side of a Queen whose majority had been just proclaimed, he withdrew into private life in a strictly private capacity, without a charge upon the pension list for himself or any of his connexionswithout an inscription in the court list, or a real of the public money. Five hundred different lucrative and permanent offices were at his disposal, but he preferred a practising lawyer's independence."

This would be rare praise in any without parallel. In striking contrast country; in Spain it must be almost stands the character of Don Luis Gonzalez Bravo, or Brabo, as he affects to write himself, who succeeded Olózaga in the premiership, for which post he united some of the most singular disqualifications ever possessed by a prime minister.

Spain, while imitating the fashions of England and France in dress and suchlike petty particulars, has also thought proper to copy certain political peculiarities of those two countries. Thus, while La Jeune France vapours in long-bearded and belligerent splendour, under the special England peeps out, gentlemanly and patronage of a Joinville, and Young dignified, from beneath the ægis of a less high-born, but, in other respects, equally distinguished character, La Joven España, emulous of their bright example, ranges itself under the patronage of the disreputable editor of a scurrilous journal. It is difficult for us in England to imagine the state of such a person can head any party or things existing in a country where section, however insignificant, in the legislative assembly, and still more difficult to conceive any amount of satirical and vituperative talent placing within his grasp the portfolio of prime minister.

Bravo's first introduction to public notice, was as member of the "Trueno," or Thunder Club-a society that amused itself, of evenings, by molesting peaceable citizens as they

wife's brother, a hanger-on at one of the theatres, was made state-groom to the Queen; while a number of other equivocal characters were appointed to the diplomatic corps, and half the political chiefs and public employés in Spain were dismissed to make room for the new premier's friends, including a considerable number of newspaper scribblers. The power of the newspaper press in Spain is enormous, and nearly all the leading politicians in Madrid either are, or have been, editors or proprietors of some one of the principal journals.

returned home to their families, thrashing the serenos or watchmen, and suchlike intellectual and dignified diversion. He got seriously wounded by a pistol-shot on one of these occasions, and we next find him editing the Guirigay or "Slang," a paper remarkable for its personal and unscrupulous tone. For some time its attacks were directed against Christina, to whose expulsion from Spain it is said to have contributed, so great is the influence of newspaper violence in the Peninsula. During the QueenDowager's three years' exile, however, Bravo wrote himself round from a violent exaltado progresista, or Radical, into a very decided moderado, or Conservative, in which latter character he entered office. Taxed with his renegade conduct, his defence was a most impudent one, highly characteristic of the man. "No es ridiculo," said he, "estar para siempre el mismo?" Is it not ridiculous to be always the same?

But though he managed to get on while in opposition-and even, by a certain amount of impassioned energy and satirical verve, to place himself at the head of a party of young members, who, although not exceeding fifty in number, turned the scale in many parliamentary contests-his incapacity became glaringly apparent as soon as he took office.

The manners and peculiarities of the lower orders in Spain offer a fertile theme, differing as they do in toto from those of the corresponding classes in any other country. They have furnished our author with materials for some amusing chapters. The description of a roadside venta, or inn, and its frequenters, is capital, and reminds us of some of Lewis's admirable pencillings of Spanish life and interiors. The amalgamation of grades of society, which in most countries would be kept carefully distinct, but in the Peninsula hobnob together in perfect good fellowship, the mixture of muleteers and alcaldes, priests and banditti, smugglers and customhouse officers, all sitting in the same smoky room, dipping in the same dish, exchanging the latest intelligence, local and political, forms a strange but a characteristic and perfectly true picture. Apropos of smugglers, here is a small statement worthy the notice of that sensible party in Spain which opposes the introduction of foreign manufactures upon payment of a reasonable duty.

"Spain is, of all European countries, the most helplessly exposed to contrabandist operations. With an ill-paid and sometimes ragged army, and with revenue officers directly exposed to temptation by inadequate salaries, she has 500 miles of Portuguese frontier and nearly 300 of Pyrenean; and with a fleet crumbled into ruins, and no longer of the slightest efficacy, she has 400 miles of Cantabrian and 700 of Mediterranean coast. Four hundred thousand smugglers are constantly engaged in demolishing her absurd fiscal laws, and some 1,600,000 pounds weight of cotton goods alone, are every year illicitly imported."

But things in Spain are now rapidly approaching that happy state when it will become quite unnecessary for the gentlemen contrabandistas to expose their valuable health to the Pyrenean fogs, or their lives in contests with aduaneros. The system is becoming each day more beautifully simple; and, strange as it may seem, the direct road for the importation of contraband goods is through the custom-house. "Bribery is here reduced to the old electioneering simplicity; and the tariff of custom-house corruption is arranged with more uniform regularity, and far more perfectly understood, than the tariff of customs' duties-the difference being, that the customs' revenues may not be paid, but the customs' officers must." The due amount of fee being insinuated into the "itching palm" of the revenue officers, your goods pass with all imaginable facility. By the magic of a four, eight, or sixteen dollar bit, as the case may be, a mist settles over the vision of the complaisant official, and either prevents his seeing at all, or else transforms in the most remarkable manner the objects that pass before him. Bales of manufactured goods assume the appearance of sacks of potatoes and onions-nay, those useful products of the soil are sometimes even supposed to be contained in wooden cases and casks, carefully hooped and nailed; and huge canvass bales are likewise cleared, and reported to be indubitably filled with the said potatoes, the softness of the packages to the touch arising probably from the fact of their being boiled!"

At times, however, by a rare chance, an incorruptible custom-house is discovered; and for that, or some other reason, it is deemed advisable to resort to the old, and certainly more sporting plan, of running the cargoes, which is accomplished in a most systematic and comfortable manner. The smugglers are usually in sufficient number to deter the carabineros from meddling; and if, by chance, the latter should interfere, they almost invariably receive a sound thrashing. There are a large number of small Portuguese craft constantly employed in running contraband goods; and the quantity of merchandise introduced from Gibraltar is enormous.

The latter town, which, by the census of 1835, had 15,000 inhabitants, contains only 3000 cigar manufacturers. As our author says, what a frightful deal they must smoke in Gibraltar!

It is all nonsense talking in mincing terms about English smuggling in Spain. However much our Government might discountenance it, nothing could be done to prevent it, not even if English guarda costas were stationed round the whole eleven hundred miles of Spanish coast. The smuggled goods would then go through Portugal, as many of them do now; or any diminution in the amount of English merchandise imported, would be made up by a corresponding increase in the quantity of French. Why, even the Germans, the respectable, plodding Germans, supply their quota of indifferent calicoes and dull cutlery to the Spanish consumer. The French, who are fond of charging England with being the nation "egoiste par excellence," who consults only her own interests, and is equally ready to poison antipodean barbarians with opium, or to violate the principles of fair dealing that ought to exist between friendly countries, by introducing contraband goods in every possible manner-the French, we say, albeit so Pecksniflian in their condolences with Spain, and other nations, which they affect to consider victims to the practices of greedy and treacherous England, are themselves most reckless and determined in their smuggling transactions with their southern neighbours; and the sole circumstance which "rises their dander" is to find English goods obtaining the preference in the Peninsula, as every where else. The constant aim of the French is to irritate Spaniards against England; and the ground upon which they have hitherto gone is, that of representing us, in all our actions, as thinking only of our own advantage. The activity and skill of French political agents were long exerted to bring about a reaction against the friendly feelings which, only a very short time back, were entertained in the Peninsula towards England; and these exertions were at last successful, although we may now hope that Spaniards are again opening their eyes to the deceit that has been practised on them. The friendly offices of

France are probably by this time beginning to be appreciated at their just value; and doubts must be arising in the minds of the rational portion of the Spanish people, whether the " perfides insulaires Idid not mean and act as honestly by them as the more smooth-tongued and insinuating allies who have reimposed upon them a Christina and a Narvaez.

"Exaggeration in all things," says the English resident, "is the leading vice of Spain. There is not a city in the Peninsula that is not 'muy noble, muy leal, y muy heroica;' not a corporate body that is not 'most excellent,' or most illustrious;' not a military corps that is not renowned, and matchless for its valour; not a ragamuffin in Castile that does not esteem himself noble, nor a brigand in Andalusia but calls himself a soldier; not a man but is a Don, nor a woman but is a Doña; not a dunce of a doctor but is profoundly learned, nor a scribbling poetaster but is a European celebrity. Where all are first-rate, how shall there be improvement? Where there is no humility, how shall there be acquisition of knowledge? Pangloss might here have found his perfect world."

It is, we fear, this Bobadil vein, this unbounded self-approval and vaingloriousness, entailing an unwillingness to acknowledge obligations, and an impatience of feeling that they have received any, which renders a large proportion of Spaniards less amicably disposed towards England than we might expect them to be, when we look at the recent history of the two countries, and recall all the friendly offices Spain has received at the hands of England. We have ourselves noticed amongst Spaniards -even amongst men of good average intelligence and education—a fretful sort of feeling whenever the support for which their country has been indebted to Great Britain was alluded to. Some of them go so far as to endeavour to persuade the world, and more especially themselves, that the parts played by English and Spaniards in the Peninsular War were the converse of what is usually supposed -that it was Spanish valour, skill, and generalship that swept Napoleon's armies before them, and drove his best commanders across the Pyrenees. The

English were there, certainly; they were very useful, but they played second fiddle to their allies on most occasions. In short, to hear many of the present generation of Spaniards talk, one might suppose that it was their ill-disciplined, badly-officered troops which won the numerous hard-fought fields of the War of Independence.

Another subject of difference, and a far more serious one than these petty ranklings of offended pride and illborne obligation, is the slave-trade, and the right of search. Persuade Spaniards, or Frenchmen, or any nation in the world, if you can, that Great Britain added twenty millions to her debt, impoverished her own colonial proprietors, and still goes to a heavy annual expense for the suppression of the slave traffic, with any other view than a very decided one to her own benefit. To Spain, thanks to the wretched administration of her internal resources, the revenue derived from her few remaining colonies is a great object; and in our hostility to the slave-trade, she beholds a direct attack on that source of income. Again, in the present depressed state of Spanish commerce, a large portion of the commercial capital of the country is invested in the slave-trade; and a constant bitter feeling towards the English is consequently kept up amongst the class whose money is thus employed. If they bring one cargo out of three to the Havannah, they have, it is said, a profit on the transaction; but at the same time it is not likely to put the slave-dealing Dons in particularly good humour to hear of the other two having been walked off by British cruisers. On the contrary, they curse the meddling Ingleses, who having, they say, cut off their own tail by emancipating their negroes, now, like the fox in the fable, wish to persuade, or, if necessary, to compel all their neighbours to follow their example.

The English resident is enthusiastic on the subject of slave emancipation, and gives us a lively account of some arguments he maintained on the subject with sundry Gaditano slave-dealers, the result of which was, of course, that each party remained precisely of the same opinion as before. The abstract philanthropy of English legislation on that question cannot be doubt