ment, and
most of those who work in the mines suffer, as may be supposed, in their
health, from the unwholesome exhalations. In the summer, when they are
most liable to be affected in that way, work is suspended, the labourers
retire to their respective provinces to recruit, and generally return in
the autumn, restored by their native air. Temperance, cleanliness, and a
milk-diet appear to be the best preservatives from the pernicious
effects of the mercury-infected atmosphere.

Captain Widdrington does not visit Catalonia, which we regret; for we
should like to have had the result of his observations on that turbulent
and troublesome province, to which he once or twice alludes. It must
truly be a difficult thing to legislate for a country split into so many
conflicting interests--fancied interests many of them--as Spain is. The
Catalonians, for instance, have got a notion that they are
cotton-manufacturers--a notion which their northern neighbours do all in
their power to nourish and encourage. Of course, the French would be
much annoyed to see Spanish ports opened to cotton goods at a reasonable
duty, until such time (if it ever arrives) as they can compete
successfully with English manufacturers. It suits their book much better
to have a prohibition, or what amounts to such, imposed on all foreign
cottons. The Pyrenees are high, but it is a long line of frontier from
Port Vendres to Bayonne, and the deuce is in it if they cannot manage to
smuggle more French calicoes and _percales_, and suchlike commodities
into Spain, than would ever be taken by the Spaniards were those
articles admitted at a reasonable duty, which would put a stop to
smuggling by rendering it unprofitable. At present there is a regular
tariff of smugglers' charges for passing goods, so much per cent on the
value, according to the bulk and nature of the articles; and the agents
of this traffic abound in Bayonne, Oleron, Perpignan, and all the
frontier towns. The idea prevailing in Spain, that Espartero intended
entering into a treaty of commerce with England, made him enemies of the
Catalonians, and indeed of the majority of the mercantile classes, most
of the members of which are more or less mad about the importance of
Spanish manufactures, or, at any rate, they seem to be nearly unanimous
in their wish to prohibit foreign goods. It is impossible to persuade
them, so pigheaded are they, that it would be better to admit foreign
manufactures at a fa