One would have preferred receiving from any other than a Frenchman so dreary a picture of the desolation mainly wrought by Frenchmen. Returning to Gerona, to which Didier's description applies (as I have already stated) nearly as well as to Figueras, in sight of which he may have written it, we shall find Mr. Street no less strongly impressed than I was with what Spain owes to France in the matter. "All this havoc and ruin is owing," he says, "like so much that one sees in Spain, to the action of the French troops during the Peninsular War." It is however but just to the French to add that the Spaniards are not, like them, endowed with wonderful recuperative energy.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Von P. L. Berckenmeyern. Hamburg, 1731.
[2] "The Frenchman like an eagle. The German like a bear. The Italian like a fox. The Spaniard like an elephant. The Englishman like a lion."
[3] Waring (John Burley) Architectural, Sculptural, and Picturesque Studies of Burgos and its neighbourhood. Folio. London. 1851.
[4] Examples of Architectural Art in Italy and Spain. Folio. London. 1850.
[5] "Viaggio in Spagna," quoted by O'Shea, page 498.
[6] Examples of Ornamental Heraldry of the sixteenth century. London, 1867. Privately printed.
[7] Given at length under the No. XXXV in the Appendix to the First Volume of the "Noticias de los Arquitectos y Architectura de España, &c.," por Señor D. Eugenio Llaguno y Amirola, &c. Madrid, 1829.
[8] Carefully illustrated geometrically in the "Monumentos Arquitectonicos." Madrid. Folio.