a strong than a pretty thing; and
another that the Englishman, inveterately a draper, is often horrified
and occasionally heart-broken. The Spaniard may regret, but cannot
mend the organ. His own will never suffer the same fate. _Chercher le
midi a quatorze heures_ is no foible of his.

The state of things cannot last; for the sentimental pour into the
country now, and insist that the natives shall become as self-conscious
as themselves. The _Sud-Express_ brings them from England and Germany,
vast ships convey them from New York. Then there are the newspapers,
eager as ever to make bricks without straw. Against Teutonic
travellers, and journalists, no idiosyncrasy can stand out. The
country will run to pulp, as a pear, bitten without by wasps and within
by a maggot, will get sleepy and drop. But that end is not yet, the
Lord be praised, and will not be in your time or mine. The tale I have
to tell--an old one, as we reckon news now--might have happened
yesterday; for that was when I was last in Spain, and satisfied myself
that all the concomitants were still in being. I can assure you that
many a Don Luis yet, bitterly poor and bitterly proud, starves and
shivers, and hugs up his bones in his _capa_ between the Bidassoa and
the Manzanares; many a wild-hearted, unlettered Manuela applies the
inexorable law of the land to her own detriment, and, with a sob in the
breath, sits down to her spinning again, her mouldy crust and cup of
cold water, or worse fare than that. Joy is not for the poor, she
says--and then, with a shrug, _Lo que ha de ser_...!

But, as a matter of fact, it belongs to George Borrow's day, this tale,
when gentlemen rode a-horseback between town and town, and followed the
river-bed rather than the road. A stranger then, in the plains of
Castile, was either a fool who knew not when he was well off, or an
unfortunate, whose misery at home forced him afield. There was no
_genus_ Tourist; the traveller was conspicuous and could be traced from
Spain to Spain. When you get on you'll see; that is how Tormillo
weaselled out Mr. Manvers, by the smell of his blood. A great, roomy,
haggard country, half desert waste and half bare rock, was the Spain of
1860, immemorially old, immutably the same, splendidly frank,
acquainted with grief and sin, shameless and free; like some brown
gipsy wench of the wayside, with throat and half her bosom bare, who
would laugh and show her teeth, and be free with her