e the two parts were written by the same hand. We have read
through both various times, but we have always sighed on coming to the
conclusion of the first. It was formerly our custom to read the Don
'pervasively' once every three years; we still keep up that custom _in
part_, and hope to do so whilst life remains. We say _in part_, because
we now conclude with the first part going no farther. We have little
sympathy with the pranks played off upon Sancho and his master by the
Duke and Duchess, to the description of which so much space is devoted;
and as for the affair of Sancho's government at Barataria, it appears to
us full of inconsistency and absurdity. Barataria, we are told, was a
place upon the Duke's estate, consisting of two or three thousand
inhabitants; and of such a place it was very possible for a nobleman to
have made the poor squire governor; but we no sooner get to Barataria
than we find ourselves not in a townlet, but in a _capital_ in Madrid.
The governor at night makes his rounds, attended by 'an immense watch;'
he wanders from one street to another for hours; he encounters all kinds
of adventures, not mock but real adventures, and all kinds of characters,
not mock but real characters; there is talk of bull-circuses, theatres,
gambling-houses, and such like; and all this in a place of two or three
thousand inhabitants, in which, by the way, nothing but a cat is ever
heard stirring after eight o'clock; this we consider to be carrying the
joke rather too far; and it is not Sancho but the reader who is joked
with. But the first part is a widely different affair: all the scenes
are admirable. Should we live a thousand years, we should never forget
the impression made upon us by the adventure of the corpse, where the Don
falls upon the priests who are escorting the bier by torch light, and by
the sequel thereto, his midnight adventures in the Brown Mountain. We
can only speak of these scenes as astonishing--they have never been
equalled in their line. There is another wonderful book which describes
what we may call the city life of Spain, as the other describes the vida
del campo--we allude of course to Le Sage's novel, which as a whole we
prefer to Don Quixote, the characters introduced being certainly more
true to nature than those which appear in the other great work. Shame to
Spain that she has not long since erected a statue to Le Sage, who has
done so much to illustrate her; but miserable envy