Gleanings from Spain

Railways are fast invading the old haunts of ignorance, superstition, and prejudice. Even Spain, that stronghold of intolerance and conceit, is having civilization thrust upon her. Relentlessly the iron roads eat their way into the heart of the country, remorselessly the telegraph stalks round and round the land, encircling it by sea as well, and as if by a galvanic shock awakening the slumbering nation. If anyone wishes to see the land of Cervantes ere it has become stale, flat, and prosaic, haste, haste—let them fly, for day by day Progress marks her triumphs, and soon the Spain of chivalry, the Spain of our romantic imagination, the Spain of the Inquisition, will be no longer recognisable, tricked out in nineteenth-century ways, manners and opinions, which it has acquired second-hand with the gloss off. Madrid is already shamming to be Paris, widening its streets, building monotonous, glaring houses, without balconies, dooming its picturesque water-carriers to extinction by the introduction of modern water-pipes, and actually waging war on time-honored dust by perpetual watering of the streets. The nobles are beginning to be startled by the ominous sound of «nouveaux riches,» and see encroaching on their prerogatives men who own to no blue blood in their veins, and who yet surpass them in wealth, magnificence, and dignity. Spain has awoken at last, after many fevered dreams, many oppressive nightmares; the day is before her, and she will be as the giant refreshed, strong to toil and to take her place among the other nations of Europe. It matters comparatively little who are her rulers; the people are now aroused, and this is no age of dynasties, but of nations.