Spanish Vistas

BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES S. REINHART NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1883 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. — All rights reserved. TO FRANCES M. LATHROP WHOSE TASTE FOR TRAVEL AND OBSERVATION EARLY PROMPTED HIS OWN These Sketches are Dedicated BY HER SON THE AUTHOR
THE two great Mediterranean peninsulas which, in opposite quarters, jut southward where—as George Eliot says, in her Spanish Gypsy —
Europe spreads her lands Like fretted leaflets, breathing on the deep,
may not inaptly be likened to a brother and sister, instead of taking their places under the usual similitude of sister countries. They have points of marked resemblance, in their picturesqueness, their treasures of art, their associations of history and romance; but, just as the physical aspect of Spain and its shape upon the map are broader, more thick-set and rugged than the slender form and flowing curves of Italy, so the Spanish language—with its Arabic gutturals interspersed among melodious linguals and vowel sounds—has been called the masculine development of that Southern speech of which the Italian presents the feminine side. The people of both countries exhibit a similar excitable, ardent quality in their characters; but the national temperament of the Spaniards is, perhaps, somewhat hardier, more virile, and sturdier in its passionateness.
It seems to be true that, while the Greek spirit transferred itself to Italy in the days of Augustus, renewing its influence at the period of the Renaissance, and leaving upon people and manners an impress never since quite effaced—an influence tending toward a certain feminine refinement—the spirit of Rome also transferred itself to the subject country, Hispania, and imbued that region with the strong, austere, or wilful characteristics of purely Latin civilization, which are still traceable there.