143 ART. V. (1.) A Hand-Book for Travellers in Spain. By RICHARD FORD. London: John Murray. 1845. (2.) Une Année en Espagne. Par CHARLES DIDIER. 1837. (3.) Histoire Politique de l'Espagne Moderne. Par M. DE MARLIANI. Paris and London, 1840. (4.) Revelations of Spain in 1845. By T. M. HUGHES. 2nd edit. Colburn, 1845. (5.) Scenes and Adventures in Spain, 1835 to 1840. By Poco Mas. Bentley, 1845. (6.) Presupuesto General de los Gastos del Estado para el presente año de 1845. Spanish Parliamentary Paper. (7.) Historia Veridica de los diez días del Ministerio Lopez. Madrid Libreria de D. Boix, 1843. (8.) Historia de las Cortes desde 1844 y semblanzas criticas de algunos Diputados. Entrega, 2. Madrid: Imprenta de D. Manuel Uzal, 1845. (9.) España Contemporanea. Entrega, 1. Madrid: Imprenta de Diaz, 1845. (10. Madrid in 1835. By a RESIDENT OFFICER. and Otley, 1836. London: Saunders (11.) España Geografica Estadistica y Pintoresca. Por DoN FRAN CISCO DE PAULA MELLADO. Madrid, 1845. (12.) El Libro del Viajero en Grenada. Por D. ALCANTARA. Granada en la impresta de Sanz, 1843. (13.) Descripcion del Monasterio y Palacio del Escorial. Madrid, 1843. (14.) Tra los Montes. Por GAUTIER. Madrid, 1843. (15.) Sketches in Spain. By Capt. S. E. Cook, R.N. Paris, 1834. (16.) Catologo de los Cuadros del Real Museo. Por DON Pedro de MADRAZO. Madrid, 1845. (17.) A Year in Spain, and Spain Revisited. By a YOUNG AMERICAN. London, 1832. It is impossible to have read the history of Spain-still more impossible to have travelled through that interesting countrywithout feeling the most painful and mournful emotions: and if such feelings pervade the mind of the intelligent stranger, no matter what his colour or clime, they take a still deeper root in the breast of an Englishman. When John, escaping from the chocolate-coloured atmosphere in which he is forced to dwell, and emerging out of the smoke and soot of London, first beholds the cloudless clime and sunny sky of Spain, he is lost in a feeling of admiration. And this feeling is enhanced a hundredfold, when, entering further into the country, he beholds a soil impatient of production, and teeming with fertility. In Spain he sees spread out before his wondering eyes-fruits full of savour and succulence-the grape, the orange, the lime, the pomegranate, the pine, the fig, the date, the melon, and hills clad with clusters, whose expressed juice furnishes some of the finest vintages in the world. In Spain he beholds, for the first time, the olive and the palm, and the sugar-cane, cochineal, cotton, tobacco and rice growing in the open air. He beholds on every side of him an energetic, a sober, and a laborious people,—a people despising danger and enamoured of enterprise; a people heretofore great in arts, in science, in literature, and in arms; great in commerce and great in navigation, yet who, despite this pristine renown, are, notwithstanding the greatest natural advantages, fallen from their high estate, and reduced almost to the lowest rank among the nations of the earth. In revolving these facts in his mind, the first feeling of an Englishman is sad and regretful, and he makes an inward resolve to penetrate, if he can, into the causes of a 'decline and fall' at once so fatal and so remarkable. But in order to do so, he must read, and mark, and digest, as well as travel; and this was heretofore not merely a work of time and labour, and of great pecuniary outlay, but often not unattended with personal danger. Previous to and subsequent to the French expedition of 1823, robberies were by no means infrequent, and from 1832 to 1840, the rise and progress of a civil war of unexampled duration and intensity, rendered journeying in Spain anything rather than a pleasant relaxation. From 1840 to the present time, the dangers and perils of a journey have no doubt greatly diminished; but still the evil name of Spain sticks fast to that ill-fated country, and few and far between are the Englishmen who have ventured into the Iberian peninsula. Some dozens of the English officers quartered in Gibraltar, will always, of course, make an excursion to Granada by Ronda, or to Malaga, Cadiz, or Seville by a steamer; but these are only flying visits, performed within a week, and seldom extending beyond a fortnight. Hundreds and thousands of Englishmen and women hurry year after year over the Alps into Italy, yet the journeyings into Spain may be counted by fives and tens, and not by hundreds or thousands. Still, with the exception of Italy, there is no country in Europe so worthy of a visit as Spain. A sense of insecurity and of personal risk have hitherto, however, operated to prevent the migration of wealthy and instructed English, who would not be deterred by distance, by expense, by imperfect communications between place and place, or perhaps even by the many discomforts incident to every Spanish journey. Steam and railroads are, however, in course of effecting wonders. A journey may be now made from Havre to Morlaix, and from Morlaix to Bordeaux by steam; by rail from Paris to Orleans; and again by steam on the Rhone, down to Avignon, so that Bordeaux and Marseilles, advanced marches on the route to Spain, are several days nearer to the English traveller than they used to be twenty years ago. But, independently of these routes, there is the rail from Paris to Bayonne in a state of forward progress; and the rail from London to Southampton, and the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company's boats to Corunna, Vigo, Cadiz, and Gibraltar, in actual operation. All these appliances and means to boot, will, however, prove unavailing, so long as a sense of danger lurks in the mind of the traveller, or so long as it is more fashionable to visit the spas of Germany than the sierras of Spain; or so long as no fashionable tourist writer shall be found inducing our wanderers, scorning the delights of Italy, the tranquil pleasures of Carlsbad and Langen Swalbach, to penetrate into the hills and cleave unto the valleys of romantic Spain. Such a tourist, in reference to the Peninsula, has been long sought for, but only recently found. What Sir Francis Bond Head and Mr. Russell accomplished for Germany, Mr. Richard Ford will, no doubt, in the ripeness of time, accomplish for Spain. The 'Hand-Book' of Spain appeared in this very month of August in the last year, and before the Christmas Holidays had attained an unusual and deserved popularity. Few, indeed, there were, who had travelled over the ground trodden by Mr. Ford; fewer, still, were competent to pronounce an opinion on a tithe of the topics handled by him; yet all welleducated persons were in a position to acknowledge his research and scholarship, the quaintness and homely vigour of his style, and his amusing and forceful illustrations. To us, who have followed his footsteps, and tracked them many a time and oft, it was well known that he had spent many years of his active and mature life in Spain, that he had lived more than three years within the precincts of the wonderful Alhambra,-that to an intimate acquaintance with the learned languages, he joined a familiarity with the language, the literature, and the history, of the Peninsula. In addition to these advantages, he possesses a taste for, and a knowledge of, the fine arts, and loves a roaming and adventurous life. There is not a kingdom, nor a province, nor a town of Spain of any note, we believe, that he has not visited; and when we tell our readers, that four years of his life were wholly passed in travelling over the length and breadth of the Peninsula, his opportunities for observation will be at once willingly conceded. But with all these opportunities, with all his attainments, natural and acquired, Mr. Ford is a man of strong prejudices, social, literary, and political. He is always and on every occasion a Tory of the old Liverpool, Eldon, and Perceval school, and never ceases to exhibit a pitiful, man worship of the individual whom he calls, par excellence, 'the Duke.' All that the Duke did in Spain was right, and here Mr. Ford is not far from right; but, not content with confining his idol's perfect and absolute wisdom to the Peninsula, Mr. Ford will have it, that in all times and in all seasons, his hero was a hero to his valet de chambre;' and here Mr. Ford is palpably wrong. Mr. Ford is that manner of blind, bigotted worshipper, who will shut his eyes to the affair of East Retford-to the speech about public meetings being farces-and to the declaration, that the rotten-borough unreformed constitution was the most perfect instrument which the wit or wisdom of man ever devised for the government of England. Far are we from saying, that the Duke of Wellington is not one of the greatest generals-one of the shrewdest, most plain-purposed and most plain-spoken men that our country has produced; but to exalt him into a great statesman and a great teacher, is a task beyond the power of any man, and we do not look into a travelling HandBook to find new and erroneous views of a public man's life pompously enunciated. If these volumes contained but a casual reference to the great general's achievements in the particular localities of which Mr. Ford speaks, we should by no means complain; but in season and out of season, the sayings, the doings, and the dispatches, of the safe, shrewd, sagacious, and victorious general, are pompously paraded. This increases the bulk without adding to the value of the HandBook. There is also another fault into which Mr. Ford is prone to fall. He is desirous, from the recesses of his wellfilled mind, to pour out all that ever has and all that can be said on each particular place; and accordingly we have Ptolemy and Polybius, Pomponius Mela and Lucan, Thucydides and Eschylus, Livy and Columella, Ducange and St. Chrysostom, with a host of Arabic and mediæval authorities, prodigally supplied: but these helps are, to the majority of readers, and to almost all travellers, a very great hindrance. The great desiderata in a hand-book are, closeness, compactness, and actuality; and the display, or even the reality, of erudition is to be avoided. In a history, the exhibition of such lore is not only pardonable, but necessary; and, sooth to say, Mr. Ford's Hand-Book much more resembles a history than a travelling manual. Indeed, we believe it is now pretty well known, that for a book of historical travels it was originally intended, and that it was to have extended to four volumes; but yielding to the suggestion of his publisher, by the aid of small type and double columns, the four volumes have been given in two; running, the first to 556, and the second to 1064 pages. It is a formidable task, in these days to wade through 1620 pages of even the most light and agreeable matter. If all that were redundant and unnecessary, however, in these volumes, were lopped off, we cannot help thinking that the book might be reduced to 800 pages, and be contained within the compass of a portable volume. That such a scheme is in contemplation, we have heard rumoured in more than one quarter; that it would be an improvement, no one who has read the book can doubt. With Mr. Ford's description of the provinces; with his preliminary remarks on public conveyances and steamers and skeleton tours; with his general views of the country and its productions; agriculture, commerce, mines, smuggling, religion, customs, and amusements, we would not interfere,-least of all would we touch his chapters on Spanish wines, Spanish oaths, Spanish cooks, the Spanish language, Spanish robbers, Spanish bull-fights, &c. These are all rich, racy, characteristic, and in the main true; but if quotation and history were more sparingly resorted to, and occasionally purposeless, critical, antiquarian, and archæological disquisitions altogether expunged, the volumes would be disencumbered of much that is certainly not valueless, but which is clearly misplaced in a guide-book. We are very ready to allow that a greater licence was needed in describing Spain and Spaniards than in describing France and Frenchmen-Italy and Italians-countries travelled over and over again by all the educated-and such licence we were and are prepared to admit ; but Mr. Ford goes far beyond such limit, attempts to account for everything, not only past and present, but that which is still hid in the coming time. He has a key to decipher this Berberia Christiana-this neutral ground, to use his own quaint phrase, between the hat and the turban. And certainly one of his tests is legitimate and unmistakable. The natives of Spain should, undoubtedly, be judged by an Oriental standard, and if so tried, much that appears strange and repugnant to European usages becomes analogous. This land and people of routine and habit, are, in the queer and quaint language of Mr. Ford, potted for anti'quarians, for here, Pagan, Roman, and Eastern customs, 'long obsolete elsewhere, turn up at every step, in church and 'house, in cabinet and campaign.' Setting out with this fixed idea, he explains much that would be otherwise unexplainable, and for the most part explains it well. But the repetitions in his volumes very often exceed all reasonable limit, and occasionally exhaust the patience of the most complaisant and courteous reader. It is true, that by repetitions alone are im |