ible in the sixteenth century, has ever
since been steadily advancing, unsettling old opinion, destroying old
follies, reforming and improving on every side, influencing even such
barbarous countries as Russia and Turkey, but leaving Spain unscathed.

While the human intellect has been making most prodigious and
unheard-of strides, while discoveries in every quarter are
simultaneously pressing upon us and coming in such rapid and
bewildering succession that the strongest sight, dazzled by the glare
of their splendor, is unable to contemplate them as a whole; while
other discoveries still more important, and still more remote from
ordinary experience, are manifestly approaching, and may be seen
looming in the distance whence they are now obscurely working on the
advanced thinkers who are nearest to them, filling their minds with
those ill-defined, restless, and almost uneasy feelings, which are the
invariable harbingers of future triumph; while the veil is being
rudely torn and nature, violated at all points, is forced to disclose
her secrets, and reveal her structure, her economy, and her laws to
the indomitable energy of man; while Europe is ringing with the noise
of intellectual achievements, with which even despotic governments
affect to sympathize, in order that they may divert them from their
natural course, and use them as new instruments whereby to oppress yet
more the liberties of the people; while, amidst this general din and
excitement, the public mind, swayed to and fro, is tossed and
agitated--Spain sleeps on, untroubled, unheeding, impassive, receiving
no impressions from the rest of the world, and making no impressions
upon it. There she lies at the further extremity of the Continent, a
huge and torpid mass, the sole representative now remaining of the
feelings and the knowledge of the middle ages, and, what is the worst
symptom of all, she is satisfied with her own condition. Tho she is
the most backward country in Europe, she believes herself to be the
foremost. She is proud of everything of which she should be ashamed.
She is proud of the antiquity of her opinion; proud of her orthodoxy;
proud of the strength of her faith; proud of her immeasurable and
childish credulity; proud of her unwillingness to amend either her
creed or her customs; proud of her hatred of heretics, and proud of
the undying vigilance with which she has baffled their efforts to
obtain a full and legal establishment on her soil.