The chief characteristics of Spain appear to be oil, dirt, priests, and bull-fights; for, without these, Church and State possibly might not cohere. Spain is a congeries of contradictions. It is very cold, and very hot; very beautiful, very ugly; very fruitful, very barren. The mental character of its population is simply a counterpart of the physical nature of the country, and is doubtless almost entirely influenced by climatic peculiarities. The Spaniard is distinguished by much natural sharpness of thought and acute intelligence. A serene and gentle spirit is often found amongst them, and they are generally extremely courteous to strangers who tread their soil and are within their gates.
The Spaniard possesses a very ardent imagination, and his passions are often very excitable—sometimes even uncontrollable. The continuous insurrections which distress the land give evidence of the constant state of fermentation in which the spirits of the population are steeped. A certain amount, however, of physical languor, engendered by the heat of their climate, and descending to them from old Saracenic blood, is blended with great mental activity and an impassioned nature. In their ordinary actions they are often gentle in the extreme, but when their passions are awakened they not unfrequently become ferocious. Calm, yet fiery; indolent, yet energetic; revengeful, yet affable; enthusiastic, yet morose; avaricious, yet generous; but, above all, superstitious and narrow—such seems to be the Spanish character.
Yet how lamentable it is to notice a country so richly endowed, whether in human talent or in natural blessings, and once the most powerful kingdom of earth, now so fallen and degraded, descending to the lowest shifts and chicanery; so utterly without influence or respect; so backward in civilization and morality, political and social, amongst the nations of Europe! In fact, Spain is—or very recently was—a dead country, whose monuments and morals are alike in ruins. Native industry is unappreciated, and foreign talent taxed to extortion. The Spaniard can rarely be roused to exertion, beyond those periodical attempts to subvert vert a bad government by the exile or slaughter of hundreds of honest and innocent people. In matters of importance he too often follows that mistaken policy which always hugs delay, and cries, "Mañana," to-morrow, always to-morrow. To-morrow comes, but Spain, the Spain of Charles V.—like the Rome and Greece of old—is no more; and, in the present slough of reckless indolence, bigotry, jealousy, isolation, internal dissensions, and utter lack of all homogeneous force, we fear, notwithstanding the more hopeful circumstances of the present, can never return. There are great minds and honest hearts within the country still, but an unkind fate has ordained that they should remain powerless, that place-hunters, parasites, and favourites may reign supreme, beneath the ægis of a despotic government, which is directed, barring that of modern Rome, by the most uncompromising of all the Catholic priesthood. As the enemies of civilization, honesty, and common sense, Rome and Spain may go arm-in-arm, the scorn of all nations, the distrust even of themselves, and a disgrace to the nineteenth century. Jesuits, monks, police, and spies, are the order of the day; while the press is gagged or servile, and all liberty of thought strangled like a dangerous snake.
Spain is a splendid territory, rich in Nature's wealth, but poor indeed in those attributes which alone truly elevate a nation—viz., a general firmness of character, desire of progress, love of liberty, purity of administration, and power of action. In Spain there exists no art, no science, but what is borrowed with bad grace from other countries. Literature, which once struggled for life, is now utterly prostrate. Its death dates back to the Inquisition, to that religious community who exercised all their holy zeal to kill the body and suffocate the mind. If there is absolute truth in Socrates' conception, that all human aspiration and effort should be generally directed towards the acquisition of knowledge, then surely are the Spaniards of to-day most aimless in their existence. In fact, the influence of the bigoted Middle Ages, when, with relentless severity, heresy was suspected in everything said, written, or done, was sufficient to destroy the taste for literature, had Spain even possessed a literary community. Philosophy or science can make no progress where reason fears to dwell.
Certainly, Cardinal Ximenes, one of Spain's most enlightened men, struck with shame at the continued ignorance and mental darkness in which the priesthood were sunk, had the courage lent him by his station and loftier mind to found the University of Alcala de Henares at the commencement of the sixteenth century. He revised the cramped version of the Scriptures, substituting for it a rendering more adapted for intellectual acceptance by compiling at his own expense the famous Complutensian Polyglot, although crushing, at the instance of the Holy Office, all attempts to translate the Bible into the Spanish tongue. He also made a yet greater step in the advance of intellectual liberty by inculcating the law which excludes Papal bulls not sanctioned by the monarch. In spite, however, of this considerable improvement in the education of the ecclesiastical mind, notwithstanding this attempt at cleaning a portion of the Augean stables of darkness and superstition, the long chronic hatred entertained, by the Executive, of all liberty of thought, and their love of power, had become too engrained a habit to allow of much more being done in one lifetime than to temper it with the seeds of a possible improvement, and merely to insert the wedge of tolerance. All that could be tortured by the cunning of partial priests into the merest suspicion of heresy, in speech or in writing, was still punished with incarceration, confiscation, torments, and death, even by the sanction of this Cardinal patron of letters himself. Under these circumstances, literature of any other sort than that of romance, mysticism, or biographies of saints, now found but dangerous ground to take root; for wherever the author was, there were the priestly supervisors gathered together. Surely the birth of culture and enlightenment appears but in the funeral train of superstition.
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.