. Spaniards are exacting critics, and
the best musicians of other countries are as well known and appreciated
as their own composers and executants. Wagner is now a household word
among them, where once Rossini was the object of fashionable admiration.
The national and characteristic songs of Spain have been already
referred to. They are perfectly distinct from those of any other nation.
There is about them a dainty grace and pathos, combined frequently with
a certain suspicion of sadness, which is full of charm, while those
which are frankly gay are full of life, audacity, and "go," that carry
away the listeners, even when the language is imperfectly understood.
The charming songs, with accompaniment for piano or guitar, of the
Master Yradier, are mostly written in the soft dialect of Andalucia,
which lends itself to the music, and is liquid as the notes of a bird.
The songs of Galicia are, in fact, the songs of Portugal; just as the
Galician language is Portuguese, or a dialect of that language, which
has less impress of the ancient Celt-Iberian and more of French than
its sister, Castilian, both being descendants of Latin, enriched with
words borrowed from the different nations which have at one time or
another inhabited or conquered their country.

The guitar is, of course, the national instrument, and the songs never
have the same charm with any other accompaniment; but the Spanish women
of to-day are prouder of being able to play the piano or violin than of
excelling in the instrument which suits them so much better. The
Spaniard is nervously anxious not to appear, or to be, behind any other
European nation in what we call "modernity," a word that signifies that
to be "up-to-date" is of paramount importance, leaving wholly out of the
question whether the change be for the better or infinitely towards the
lower end of the scale.

The records of Spain in art, as in literature, are so grand, so
European, in fact, that it is much if the artists of to-day come within
measurable distance of those who have made the glory of their country.
Nevertheless, the modern painters and sculptors of Spain hold their own
with those of any country. After the temporary eclipse which followed
the death of Velasquez, Ribera, and Murillo--the eighteenth century
produced no great Spanish painter, if we except Goya, who left no
pupils--Don Jose Madrazo, who studied at the same time as Ingres in the
studio of David, began the modern renais