. I have discovered that it was an Orbajosan, one Mateo Diaz
Coronel, an ensign in the guards, who, in 1709, wrote and published
in Valencia the 'Metrical Encomium, Funeral Chant, Lyrical Eulogy,
Numerical Description, Glorious Sufferings, and Sorrowful Glories of the
Queen of the Angels.' I possess a most precious copy of this work, which
is worth the mines of Peru. Another Orbajosan was the author of that
famous 'Treatise on the Various Styles of Horsemanship' which I
showed you yesterday; and, in short, there is not a step I take in the
labyrinth of unpublished history that I do not stumble against some
illustrious compatriot. It is my purpose to draw all these names out of
the unjust obscurity and oblivion in which they have so long lain. How
pure a joy, dear Pepe, to restore all their lustre to the glories, epic
and literary, of one's native place! And how could a man better employ
the scant intellect with which Heaven has endowed him, the fortune which
he has inherited, and the brief period of time on earth allowed to even
the longest life. Thanks to me it will be seen that Orbajosa is the
illustrious cradle of Spanish genius. But what do I say? Is not its
illustrious ancestry evident in the nobleness and high-mindedness of
the present Urbs Augustan generation? We know few places where all the
virtues, unchoked by the malefic weeds of vice, grow more luxuriantly.
Here all is peace, mutual respect, Christian humility. Charity is
practised here as it was in Biblical times; here envy is unknown; here
the criminal passions are unknown, and if you hear thieves and murderers
spoken of, you may be sure that they are not the children of this
noble soil; or, that if they are, they belong to the number of unhappy
creatures perverted by the teachings of demagogues. Here you will see
the national character in all its purity--upright, noble, incorruptible,
pure, simple, patriarchal, hospitable, generous. Therefore it is that
I live so happy in this solitude far from the turmoil of cities where,
alas! falsehood and vice reign. Therefore it is that the many friends
whom I have in Madrid have not been able to tempt me from this place;
therefore it is that I spend my life in the sweet companionship of my
faithful townspeople and my books, breathing the wholesome atmosphere of
integrity, which is gradually becoming circumscribed in our Spain to the
humble and Christian towns that have preserved it with the emanations of
their virtues