nd, with England's help, the usurper was driven from the throne
of France, and finally caged in St. Helena. But it is never forgotten
that Spain--these two or three sons of hers preferring honour to
life--has the glory of having been the first to oppose and check the
man and the nation that aspired to tyrannise over Europe.

It is not too much to say that the conduct of every individual in
Cervera's fleet at Santiago de Cuba showed that the Spaniard's
magnificent courage, his absolute devotion to duty, and his disregard of
death are no whit less to-day than when those two thousand naked men
stood in the breach to be slain in the name of their country's honour.
The _Oquendo_, already a wreck, coming quietly out of her safe moorings
in obedience to the insane orders of the Government in Madrid, steering
her way with absolute coolness so as to clear the sunken _Diamante_, to
face certain and hideous death, is a picture which can never fade from
memory. It was said at the time by their enemies that there was not a
man in the Spanish fleet that did not deserve the Victoria Cross; and
this was all the more true because there was not even a forlorn hope: it
was obedience to orders in the absolute certainty of death, and, what
was harder still, with full knowledge of the utter uselessness of the
sacrifice.

It is difficult to imagine that anyone can read the record of this
heroic passage in the history of the Spain of to-day without a throb of
admiration and pity. No wonder that the generous enemy went out of their
way to do honour to the melancholy remnant of heroes as they mounted the
sides of the American ironclads, prisoners of war.

Cervantes gave to the world a new adjective when he wrote his romance
of _The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha_--a world in which the
filibusters are those of commerce, the pirates those of trade. When we
English call an action "quixotic," we do not exactly mean disapproval,
but neither, certainly, do we intend admiration; unless it be that of
other-worldliness which it is well to affect, however far we may be from
practising it ourselves. It is, at best, something quite unnecessary, if
acknowledged to be admirable in the abstract. The quixotic are rarely
successful, and success is the measure by which everything is judged
to-day. Be that as it may, the more intimately one knows Spain, the more
one becomes aware that what is with us an amiable quality of somewhat
dubious value, is one of thos