Romantic Spain

e Grand Dames-Queen Isabella-The Embarrassed Mr. Layard of Nineveh-The Great Powers Hesitate-America Goes Ahead-General Sickles-Mahomet and the Mountain-Republicanism a

flow are abundant. It wants a river; the Manzanares, I am told, is but a ditch. I do not know if that is so; I never could see the Manzanares. A rugged, sun-blistered city, Madrid struck me as no more characteristically Spanish-or what I had taught myself to accept as such-than Turin is Italian; both are half-Frenchified. In the northern distance are the summits of th

vortex of the pool. I was fortunate. I got rooms in the Fonda de Paris, an hotel at the corner of the Calle de Alcalá, the principal avenue leading from the Plaza. As proof of the unsettled condition of affairs and its effect upon trade, it need only be said that at the table d'h?te of this, the first hotel in the capital, where one hundred and thirty persons usually sit down to dinner, there were sometimes not more than fifteen or twenty, and a proportion of these were fly-about Special Correspondents. Yet in this exiguous circle of prudent people who were detained in Madrid, or foolhardy people

ember; but that there was something phenomenally bold in him I am certain. Constantine's instincts were predatory, and his manners morose. There was a tradition that he had been a bandit in the neighbourhood of Smyrna, or an innkeeper by the Marseilles docks-much about the same thing, and that he was prepar

ed his wondrous balm in sonorous patter, and occasionally curtained his face with his thick mane brought over from his back as tangible testimony to the fertilizing properties of the balm. In short, from those windows I could take in the cardiac pulsing of Madrid. Below me, as I sat and smoked my cigarette, the beginning of change or crux, accident or riot, the initial whims or humours of the populace, the formation of a procession or the overture of a pronunciamiento, were within my ken. And at one corner of the Puerta were the General Post Office and Telegraphic Bureau, a matter of great convenience to me, if only they were properly managed. However, it was far easier to collect news than to send it to the desired destination. The post was as unsafe as in those days in another land when Mr. Richard Turpin, highwayman, and his comrogues intercepted his Majesty's mails. As for messages by wire, I was not long in learning that no important informatio

ing along the streets. Yet I was in every quarter of the town, to the lowest, at all hours. There are parts of London where the foreign visitor could not penetrate and come back with the same story. The Madrile?os are indolent-granted; but they are frugal, temperate, and well-conducted. Occasionally a poniard is slipped into the ribs of an enemy, but mistakes will occur in the best-regulated families. If this be a vindictive and blood-sucking people, the vampirism is adroitly concealed; the dirty linen must be washed in the dark corner where the charcoal is stored, so that Paul Pry may not be gratified with the sight. There is no working population at Madrid; there a

barbers in an indignant round-robin, "we shall no longer submit

feated; Madrid le

the orthodox method by revolution or the assassin, his name would have been garlanded with rosemary for remembrance. But Spanish pride was nettled to the quick at the cavalier way he had tossed back, with a shrug of the shoulders, the gift of a crown when he had tired of it. He had looked upon the throne of Castile as a gewgaw to be surrendered with indifference, and steamed contentedly to Italy to enjoy his comparatively obscure Dukedom and rank of General in

e denied-that of the slaughtered "Paladino," no longer fiery and strenuous, but a figure, inert, waxen, blood-bolstered, a bullet-riddled flesh-target It was most unpropitious of entries. There was an odour of cerecloth in the tapestry, the yel

icious, and on

neral, and with

weighing deli

pped up his team, but the wheels of the two vehicles had locked in each other, and the horses galloped frantically side by side. The aide-de-camp, fearing a new and daring experiment in regicide, snatched his rapier from the sheath and began furiously prodding through the window of the hackney-coach. The fat bourgeois shrunk and flattened himself into a corner, drew in his breath, and dodged the lunges of the searching steel. When the palace-gates were reached, and the animals were stopped, the unfortunate citizen was extricated from his hazardous p

the opposition significantly trotted off. Once an immense procession of the aristocratic families made its appearance, and slowly and perseveringly "took the dust." Such a turn-out of gala equipages had not been witnessed for years. All the ladies were arrayed in the ancient Spanish costume; the fan and veil with high comb and carnation in the hair in every case replaced the Parisian bonnet and parasol. It was a protest against the foreign dynasty, and was clearly meant as a demonstration of insult. One of the Royal household was equal to the provocation; whether Spani

udet's description of Isabella as a stout queen, who by her massive jaws and high complexion resembled a coarse-rinded blood-orange, would not be endorsed by these humble yearners after the bygone. Indeed, they regarded her as one who had been a type of beauty in her time, and was still a type of good

tarrh which confined him to his room. I went to visit him, when we had an interesting dialogue on some recently exhumed relics of antiquity and exquisite bits of crockery-ware. Mr. Layard impressed me as more taken up with concerns of Nineveh and Wardour Street than of la haute politique. But, as he frankly acknowledged, he was not free to act until he had received his instructions from Downing Street. Though there is no written pact to the effect, the rule is that Russia, Germany, Aus

mand transmitted by cable in the dawn of Wednesday, the 14th of February, an answer was returned within twenty hours, permitting him to exercise his judgment as he thought proper. He imagined that a Federal Republic, on the pattern of that of the United States, with provincial legislatures in Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia, and so on, and a National Congress in Madrid, was the panacea for the ills of Spain, and that that would be sufficient to dissolve all antagonisms of race, custom, and feeling, and amalgamate them into one accordant patriotic sentiment. The General was over-hopeful in the estimation of others, who knew Spain as well as he; but he acted rightly according to his views, and ably according to his gifts-only it was to be hoped the General would use his influence to dissuade his Government from offending its friends and brothers of Spain by proposing anew a transacti

. The truth was, M. Thiers could not come to any decision without consulting his Council of Ministers. His action was not quite so unfettered as that of President Grant. This was the more to be regretted

advances were met with frigid politeness. A Madrid paper asserted that "an important and friendly conference" had been held between the Minister and Mr. Layard, which, to say the least, was a suggestio falsi. Mr. Layard, as an English gentleman, could not but have received his visitor in a friendly manner; but he kept within the strict line of his very delicate duties with a studious discretion. Se?or Castelar saw plainly that events had not prepared the way and made straight the path of the new Republic towards recognition. The Great Powers could not

ower classes of the towns-an average, intelligent, middle-class Spaniard-and he would tell you there were no Republicans in Spain. The thorough frankness with which Spaniards speak of their own country, its divisions and its national faults, is phenomenal. "We are very foolish," they own with a charming c

as well as national independence. In that they were but logical. The Republicans out of power inveighed against standing armies as a monstrosity, a relic of effete Monarchical tyranny. The argument was now used against the Republic; the bird of freedom was menaced by a shaft plumed from her own wing. If

restaurant decked with star-spangled banners, and had the privilege of making all the magnates of the capital, soldiers, ministers, courtiers, nobles, poets, and painters, clink their glasses as he sang "Yankee Doodle." Long as he had been in Madrid, he could not speak Spanish correctly, and his mistakes fed the clubs with side-splitting anecdotes. He was the soul of hospitality, and garrulous as a jay. He was in the secrets of the wire-workers,

got the wr

strument. "So you have come here to teach me my bu

t consider the pain. Do with

hat time the se?or may have discovered that though the dear doctor may not be

amiliar. He had looked into the mouths of every Infante and Infanta, had lanced the gums of awful Captains-General, and inserted gold wires in the ivory treasures of most of the reigning beauties. He had been dentist by appointment to Isabella, and had care of the machoire of the lovely Euge

s were leaders of parties. One non-politician, a scion of my own sept, but no relative, I did call upon, as funds were to be forwarded to me through his agency. A pleasant old man, he had a brogue as Irish as the canavaun of the Bog of Allen, a

f half these wretched politicians by trade, you would spit

, who, when asked on his death-bed by his father-confessor, Did he

ued, "and yet one can't tell; but I think they will go on shil

tter field for my labour

u must cut off that yellowish-red beard or they w

equal to the sacrifice of sha

sure enough, but it is not

ve, gentle, but fiercely fanatical where religion is concerned. Instances were narrated to me of travellers who had been arrested by them, being liberated without damage to person or detriment to purse. In one case a Frenchman was robbed by a small party, but his money and papers were restored to hi

olonel, "I'll fi

e, would he take a letter through the disturbed district, and post i

be wel

and a five-franc piece. While monsieur was searching hi

, caballero; how

ered himself up. Honour is not yet extinct in the Basque provinces, nor is magnanimity in the Spanish army. The comman

lows cut telegraph wires a

railway are our greatest enemies; the one sen

The troops arrive, their commander demands to be furnished with a train to take him to a certain point; if the station-master refuses he is not mere

nd the railways?" The query may b

ormous and difficult an extent

ock-houses, and supplied escorts to the trains; but the Carlists had an unpurchasable ally in the darkness. They could come down in the night and play old Harry with metals and wires. The insurgents were ill-armed and undisciplined, but they were on their own ground, every square inch of which they knew;

fates were against the insurgents, as they were met at Buendia and badly beaten two days after they had unfurled the banner of revolt. Eleven of them were slain, including a priest, twenty wounded and one hundred and seventeen taken prisoners, including their two chiefs. The elder of these, Alonso, a man of three-score and ten, died in the military hospital of Madrid on the 19th of March. He was a v