o be impossible for anyone to go to rest until he has read
the late edition, which comes out not long before midnight. It is said
to have no politics, and only pretends to give all the news of the
world. There are many illustrated papers, both comic and serious. The
charmingly artistic little _Blanco y Negro_, beautifully gotten up, is
at the head of all the more dignified illustrated journals of the
country. There are no kiosks; the papers are sold by children or by old
women in the streets, and the Madrid night is rent by the appalling
cries of these itinerant vendors of literature. For the Spanish
newspaper is always literature, which is a good deal more than can be
said for some of the English halfpenny Press. Whatever may be the
politics of the particular journal, its _Castellano_ is perfect; perhaps
a little stilted or pompous, but always dignified and well-written.

The journalists of Madrid have a special facility for saying with an air
of extreme innocence what they, for various reasons, do not care to
express quite openly. Allegories, little romances, stories of fact full
of clever words of "double sense" make known to the initiated, or those
who know how to read between the lines, much that might otherwise awaken
the disagreeable notice of the censor, when there is one. There is an
air of good-natured raillery which takes off the edge of political
rancour, and keeps up the amenities and the dignity of the Spanish
Press. Only the other day one of the leading English journals pointed
out what a dignified part the Press of Madrid, of every shade of
politics, had played in the recent effort made by some foreign
newspapers--of a class which so far does not exist in Spain--to make
mischief and awaken national jealousy between England and Spain on the
subject of the works now being carried out by the English Government at
Gibraltar. The Spanish newspapers, of all shades of opinion, have made
it abundantly evident that their country entertains no unworthy
suspicion of England's good faith, and has not the smallest intention of
being led into strained or otherwise than perfectly friendly relations
with their old allies of the Peninsular War, to gratify the rabid enmity
of a section of a Press foreign to both countries. This is, perhaps, the
more remarkable because a certain amount of misunderstanding of England
exists among some elements of the Spanish Press.

The Liberal party in Spain is, in fact, the party of progr