ain. By Augustus J.C. Hare, author of
"Memorials of a Quiet Life," "Walks in Rome," etc. London:
Strahan & Co.; New York: Dodd & Mead.

This companionable book tells you how to travel over the Spanish
Peninsula by means of a slight knowledge of the Castilian tongue, a
bold infidelity to Murray's _Guide_, a cake of soap and some Liebig's
broth, and a habit of universal politeness. "Pardon me, my sister,"
said the author to a beggar-woman at Barcelona: "does not your worship
see that I am drawing?" "Ah, Dios!" she answered, "blind that I was!
worm that I am! So your worship draws? And I--I too am a lover of the
arts." On the other hand, a stiff-necked Englishman traveling from
Seville to Xeres sent his driver to dine in the kitchen of an inn on
the road. The driver, who in his heart thought that he would have been
doing great honor to a heretic by sitting at the same table with him,
concealed his indignation at the time, but in the middle of the road,
three or four leagues from Xeres, in a horrible desert full of bogs
and brambles, pushed the Englishman out of the carriage, and cried out
as he whipped on his horse, "My lord, you did not find me worthy to
sit at your table; and I, Don Jose Balbino Bustamente y Orozco, find
you too bad company to occupy a seat in my carriage. Good-night!"
Another story, of time-honored repetition, is here restored to what
may possibly have been its true parentage. A gypsy, on his knees
to his priest, is tempted by the father's snuffbox and steals it.
"Father," he says immediately, "I have one more confession: I accuse
myself of stealing a snuffbox." "Then, my son, you must certainly
restore it." "Will you have it yourself, my father?" "I? certainly
not," answered the confessor. "The fact is," proceeded the gypsy,
"that I have offered it to the owner, and he has refused it." "Then
you can keep it with a good conscience," answered the father. Such are
the glimpses of Spanish character. We could easily bear to have more
of them; but the author, accompanied with ladies, and an antiquarian
by habit and nature, gives more sketches of ruins, and of landscapes
which are usually found "hideous," than of the infinite whims of
national manners. His contempt for Spanish landscape appears to us to
amount to a disease: he scorns honest Murray for describing Valencia's
mud huts as "pearls set in emeralds," and says that O'Shea's eulogy of
her as "the sultana of Mediterranean cities" is a glowing p