furious fighting. In
our estimation, he encounters far less risk than does the humblest of
the banderilleros or chulos, who torment the bull face to face in the
fullness of his physical strength and courage. Still, instances are
not wanting wherein these matadors have been seriously wounded and
even killed by a frantic and dying bull, who has roused himself for a
last final struggle.

Whatever colonial modification the Spanish character may have
apparently undergone in Cuba, the Creole is Castilian still in his
love for the cruel sports of the arena. Great is the similitude also
between the modern Spaniard and the ancient Roman in this respect. As
the Spanish language more closely resembles Latin than does the
Italian, so do the Spanish people show more of Roman blood than the
natives of Italy themselves. _Panem et circenses_ (bread and
circuses!) was the cry of the old Roman populace, and to gratify their
wishes millions of sesterces were lavished, and hecatombs of human
victims slain in the splendid amphitheatres erected by the masters of
the world in all the cities subject to their sway. And so _pan y
toros_ (bread and bulls!) is the imperious demand of the Spaniards, to
which the government is forced to respond. The parallel may be pursued
still further. The proudest ladies of Rome, maids and matrons, gazed
with liveliest interest upon the dying gladiators who hewed each other
in pieces, or on the Christians who perished in conflict with the wild
beasts, half starved to give them battle. So the senoras and senoritas
of Madrid, Seville, Malaga, and Havana enjoy, with keen delight, the
terrible spectacle of bulls slaughtered by picadors and matadors, and
gallant horses ripped up and disemboweled by the horns of their brute
adversaries. It is true that the ameliorating spirit of Christianity
is evinced in the changes which the arena has undergone. Human lives
are no longer designedly sacrificed wholesale in the bloody contests,
yet the bull-fight is sufficiently barbarous and atrocious. It is a
national institution, indicative of national character.

To look upon the serenity of Cuban ladies, driving in the Paseo or
listening to the nightly music in the Plaza de Isabella, one could not
possibly imagine them to be lacking in tenderness, or that there was
in them sufficient hardihood to witness such exhibitions as we have
described, and yet one third of the audience on the occasion spoken of
was composed of the gentler