SPANISH BULL FIGHTS.
There are found, even where we have the best civilization, some degraded classes who delight in cruel, bloody sports, in witnessing scenes most revolting to persons of humane feelings and better culture. But desperadoes, pugilists, and other fighting men, with those who have a fiendish satisfaction in the sufferings and blood of the dumb animals they torture, are counted alien from our Christian civilization. Their characters and their crimes are detested by all good citizens. But when deeds of cruelty and blood are not only endured and condoned, but raised to the dignity of national sports, it shows a state of society that can hardly be called civilized. Ancient Rome had her gladiatorial shows for the gratification of those eager to witness the bloody spectacle. The tournaments of chivalrous knights in the mediæval times, who slew each other as an exhibition of their strength and skill, were of the same character. In Spain and Portugal even to the present day bull fights are a national amusement, in which nearly all classes find pleasure. Our attention is just now called to this. A suggestive note from a gentleman of culture and refined sensibilities, says: “A king of Spain brought home a young wife, whose first duty was to give the signal for the beginning of a bull fight. The same monarch is visited by a German prince, in whose honor these brutalities are perpetrated on a more magnificent scale than usual.” And so it is. Alas for European civilization in the nineteenth century!
The preparation for these sports is extensive. The ring is of vast dimensions, in the center of which is a pit, or wide area, sunk in terraced granite, with galleries rising on all sides, sufficient to seat at least ten thousand people who usually crowd the place on Sabbath afternoon. The fighters and their assistants are trained to their business, and handle their weapons skillfully. Some are mounted on horses with long slender spears, used simply to torture and exasperate, but to inflict no deadly wound. The “killer” is a swordsman on foot, who baffles and confuses the bull, drawing his attention this way and that, playing his red cloak before his eyes, and watching his opportunity to plunge the sword to the hilt into the neck of the animal. They are well paid, and often amass large fortunes. But no verbal account of a bull tourney can present the rapid changes, the dangers and escapes, the skill, the picturesqueness, and the horror of the actual thing. The acts, brilliant or repulsive, occur in rapid succession, presenting only glimpses of dramatic, ghastly pictures, which fade out instantly to re-form in new phases. The poor, gaunt, dilapidated horses used are a cheap contribution to the occasion, and forced into position to be killed by the horns of the bull, as he, in turn, is doomed to die by the sword of the killer, with not the slightest chance to survive the bloody fray. A fierce, powerful bull has been known to kill five horses in ten minutes. The first rush against a horse is a sight horrible to witness. You hear the horns tearing the tough hide, crashing the ribs, dragging the entrails from the quivering body. When two or more of the poor animals are struggling on the earth in the ring, now reeking with blood, others, with bandaged eyes, and hideously gashed sides, are spurred and goaded on to a similar fate. A witness tells of seeing “a horse and rider lifted bodily on the horns, and so tossed that the horseman was flung from his saddle, hurtled over the bull, and landed solidly on his back, senseless.” The grooms bore him off white and rigid, but the eager spectators heeded him not. They were wildly cheering the bull’s strength and prowess. Occasionally a man is horribly mangled, killed in the ring, or maimed for life; so a surgeon attends in the ante-room, and (alas! the mockery,) a priest is at hand, with his holy wafer for the last sacrament in case of any accident to a good bull-fighting Catholic. Yet things so unutterably repulsive are witnessed with apparent delight by richly dressed Spanish gentlemen and ladies of the highest rank.
The performance, as at present maintained, is far below that of other days, when the nation had more vigor. The dumb animals are, by arrangements in the ring, put to a much greater disadvantage, and the necessity for great dexterity and courage no longer existing, the class of fighting men do not, in these respects, compare well with their predecessors.
Spain, once a powerful nation, having a class—not numerous—of highly cultivated citizens, and a literature by no means despicable, has fallen into a sad condition, neither respected nor feared as formerly. The brutal sports in which she delights could never be introduced or tolerated in really refined society, or by cultured people, but when retained as a relic of earlier barbarism they have an educating force, and nurture to still greater strength the evil passions that made them possible. Some things among us may have a dissipating, if not demoralizing, tendency, and should be abandoned. Our voice is not against all amusements. Innocent recreations are healthy. Our minds and bodies need them. Only let them be suitable, and of an elevating tendency.
