ministers by whom Spain has been misgoverned, first captivated the royal Messalina by his talent of strumming on the guitar. Isaiah gives the truest image of the desolation of an Eastern city, the "ceasing of the mirth of the guitar and tambourine." In most villages the barbero is the Figaro, who seldom fails to stroll down to the venta unbidden and from pure love of harmony, gossip, and the bota, where his song secures him supper and welcome; a funcion is soon armada, or a party got up of all ages and sexes, who are attracted by the tinkling, like swarming bees, and the more if the stranger volunteers to pay for refreshments. The guitar is part and parcel of the Spaniard and his ballads, and, so say the political economists, has done more injury to Spain than hailstorms or drought, from fostering singing, dancing, and idleness; the performer slings it across his shoulder with a ribbon, as was depicted on the tombs of Egypt 4000 years ago (Wilkinson, ii. ch. vi.). It is the unchanged kinoor of the East, the reapa, cithera, guitarra, githorne; the "guiterne Moresche" of the ministrellers (Ducange). The performers, seldom scientific musicians, content themselves with striking the chords, sweeping the whole hand over the strings, rasqueando, or flourishing, floreando, and tapping the guitar-board with the thumb, golpeando, at which they are very expert. Occasionally in the towns there is a zapatero or a maestro of some kind, who has attained more power over this ungrateful instrument; but the attempt is generally a failure, for it responds coldly to Italian words and elaborate melody, which never come home to Spanish ears or hearts; like the guitar of Anacreon, love, sweet love, is its only theme, pwra μovov. The multitude suit the guitar to the song; both air and words are frequently extemporaneous; the language comes in aid to the fertile mother-wit of the natives; rhymes are dispensed with at pleasure, or mixed up according to caprice with assonants, with which more of the popular refranes are rounded off than by rhymes. The assonant consists of the mere recurrence of the same vowels, without reference to that of consonants. Thus santos, llantos, are rhymes; amor and razon are assonants; even these, which poorly fill a foreign ear, are not always observed; a change in intonation, or a few thumps more or less on the guitar-board, does the work, and supersedes all difficulties. These more pronunciationis, this ictus metricus, constitute a rude prosody, and lead to music just as gestures do to dancing,-to ballads,-" que se cantan bailando;" and which, when heard, reciprocally inspire a Saint Vitus's desire to snap fingers and kick heels, as all will admit in whose ears the habas verdes of Leon, or the cachucha of Cadiz, yet ring. The words destined to set all this capering in motion-not written for cold critics-are listened to by those who come attuned to the hearing vein—who anticipate and re-echo the subject—who are operated on by the contagious bias. Thus a sound-fascinated audience of otherwise sensible Britons, tolerates the positive presence of nonsense at an opera. To feel the full power of the guitar and Spanish song, the performer should be a sprightly Andaluza, taught or untaught; and when she wields the instrument as her fan, as if part of herself, and alive, no wonder one of the old fathers of the church said, that he would sooner face a singing basilisk: she is good for nothing when pinned down to a piano, on which few Spanish women play even tolerably. The words of her song are often struck off at the

moment, and allude to incidents and persons present. Sometimes those of la gente ganza, que tiene zandunga, are most clever, full of epigram and double entendre; they often sing what may not be spoken, and steal hearts through ears, for, as Cervantes says, Cuando cantan encantan : at other times their song is little better than nonsense, with which the audience is just as well satisfied. For, as Figaro says-" ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'être dit, on le chante." A good voice, which Italians call novanta-nove, ninety-nine parts out of the hundred, is very rare; nothing strikes a traveller more unfavourably than the harsh voice of Spanish women in general. The Spanish guitar requires an abandon, a fire, and gracia which could not be risked by ladies of more northern climates and more tightly-laced zones. The songs, the ballads, "this free press" of the people of Spain, and immemorially their delight, have tempered the despotism of their church and state, have sustained a nation's resistance against foreign aggression.

Not much music is printed in Spain; the songs and airs are frequently sold in MS. Sometimes, for the very illiterate, the notes are expressed in numeral figures, which correspond with the number of the strings. Andalucia is the chosen spot to form the best collection. Don N. Zamaracola has published a small selection- Coleccion de Seguidillas, Tiranas, y Polos,' Mad. 1799, under the name of Don Preciso. The Seguidillas, Manchegas, Boleras are a sort of madrigal, and consist of 7 verses, 4 lines of song and 3 of chorus, estrevillo; the Rondenas and Malagenas are couplets of 4 verses, and take their names from the towns where they are most in vogue; the term of others, La Arana, comes from the Havana. The best guitars in the world were made by the Pajez family, father and son, in Cadiz.

Meanwhile the genuine airs and tunes are very Oriental, of most remote antiquity, and a remnant of primitive airs, of which a want of the invention of musical notation has deprived us. Melody among the Egyptians, like sculpture, was never permitted to be changed, lest any new fascination might interfere with the severe influence of their mistress, religion. That both were invented for the service of the altar is indicated in the myth of their divine origin. These tunes passed into other countries; the plaintive manerōs of the Nile, brought by the Phoenicians into Spain, became the Linus of Greece (Herod. ii. 79). The national tunes of the Fellah, the Moor, and the Spaniard, are still slow and monotonous, often in utter opposition with the sentiments of the words, which have varied, whilst the airs remain unchanged. They are diatonic rather than chromatic, abounding in suspended pauses, and unisonous, not like our glees, yet generally provided with an "estrevillo," a chorus in which the audience joins. They owe little to harmony, the end being rather to affect than to please. Certain sounds seem to have a mysterious aptitude to express certain moods of the mind in connection with some unexplained sympathy between the sentient and intellectual organs the simplest are by far the most ancient. Ornate melody is a modern invention from Italy; and although, in lands of greater intercourse and fastidious civilization, the conventional has ejected the national, fashion has not shamed or silenced the old-ballad airs of Spain -those "howlings of Tarshish." Indeed, national tunes, like the songs of birds, are not taught in orchestras, but by mothers to their infant

progeny in the cradling nest. As the Spaniard, in the mass, is warlike without being military, saltatory without being graceful, so he is musical without being harmonious; he continues much the raw man material made by nature, and treating himself mostly as he does the raw products of his soil, takes things as he finds them, leaving art and final development to the foreigner. He is better seen in the streets than in the saloon-in the Serrania and far from cities. The venta after all is the true opera-house of Spain: all the rest is London leather or Parisian prunella; y no vale nada. The student may consult Origen de Teatro Español, M. Garcia, Madrid, 1802; Tratado del Histrionismo, Pellicer, Madrid, 1804; Origines del Teatro Español, Moratin, Madrid, 1830; and the excellent work on the Spanish Theatre by the German Schak ; see also our papers, on the Spanish Stage, Quart. Rev.' No. cxvii. ; and on Spanish Ballads, Edin. Rev.' No. cxlvi.

XXIII. SPANISH CIGARS.

But whether at the bull-fight or theatre, lay or clerical, wet or dry, the Spaniard during the day, sleeping excepted, solaces himself, when he can, with a cigar; this is his nepenthe, his pleasure opiate, his te veniente die et te decedente, which soothes but not inebriates.

The manufactory of the cigar is not the least active of all carried on in the Peninsula. The buildings are palaces; witness Seville, Malaga, and Valencia. As a cigar is a sine quâ non in a Spaniard's mouth, it must have its page in a Spanish Handbook. Ponz, the first in that field, remarks (ix. 201), " You will think me tiresome with my tobacconistical details, but the vast bulk of my readers will be more pleased with it than with an account of all the pictures in the world." This calumet of peace is the poor man's friend, calms the mind, soothes the temper, and makes men patient under trouble, and hunger, heat, and despotism. "Quoique puisse dire," said Molière, "Aristote et toute la philosophie, il n'y a rien d'égal au tabac." In larderless Spain it is meat and drink both, and the chief smoke connected with caterings for the mouth issues from labial chimneys.

Tobacco, this anodyne for the irritability of human reason, is, like spirituous liquors which make it drunk, a highly-taxed article in civilized societies. In Spain, the Bourbon dynasty (as elsewhere) is the hereditary tobacconist-general; the privilege is generally farmed out to some contractor: accordingly, a really good home-made cigar is with difficulty to be had in the Peninsula for love or money. There seems to be no royal road to the science of cigar-making; the article is badly made, of bad materials, and, to add insult to injury, charged at an exorbitant price. In order to benefit the Havana, tobacco is not allowed to be grown in Spain, which it would do perfectly near Malaga, for when the experiment was made, and proved successful, the cultivation was immediately prohibited by the government The badness and dearness of the royal article favours the well-meaning smuggler; and this corrector of blundering chancellors of exchequers provides a better and cheaper thing from Gibraltar. No offence is more dreadfully punished in Spain than that of tobacco-smuggling, which robs the royal pocket-all other robbery is as nothing, for the lieges only suffer.

The encouragement afforded to the manufacture and smuggling of cigars at Gibraltar is a never-failing source of ill blood and ill will between the Spanish and English governments. This most serious evil is contrary to treaties, injurious to Spain and England alike, and is beneficial only to aliens of the worst character who form the real plague and sore of the Rock.

Many tobaccose epicures, who smoke their regular dozen, place the supply sufficient for the day, between two fresh lettuce-leaves, which improves the narcotic effect. Ferdinand VII. was not only a great manufacturer but consumer of certain Purones, a large thick cigar made expressly for his gracious use in the Havana, and of the vuelta de abajo, the very best, for he was too good a judge to smoke his own manufacture. The cigar was one of his pledges of love and hatred: when meditating a treacherous coup, he would give graciously a royal weed to a minister, and when the happy individual got home to smoke it, he was saluted by an alguacil with an order to quit Madrid in twentyfour hours.

The bulk of Spaniards cannot afford either the expense of tobacco, which is dear to them, or the loss, of not losing time, which is very cheap, by smoking a whole cigar: a single cigar furnishes occupation and recreation for half an hour. Though few Spaniards ruin themselves in libraries, fewer are without a little blank book of papel de hilo, a particular paper made best at Alcoy, in Valencia. At any pause all say at once-pues señores! echemos un cigarito-well then, gentlemen, let us make a little cigar: when forthwith all set seriously to work; every Spaniard, besides this book, is armed with a small case of flint, steel, and a combustible tinder, "yesca." To make a paper cigar, like putting on a cloak, flirting a fan, or clicking castanets, is an operation of much more difficulty than it seems, but Spaniards, who have done nothing so much from their childhood upwards, perform both with extreme facility and neatness. This is the mode :the petacca (Arabicè Buták), a cigar case worked by a fair hand in coloured pita (the thread from the aloe), is taken out-a leaf is torn from the book, which is held between the lips, or downwards from the back of the hand, between the fore and middle finger of the left handa portion of the cigar, about a third, is cut off and rubbed slowly in the palms till reduced to a powder—it is then jerked into the paper-leaf, which is rolled up into a little squib, and the ends doubled down, one of which is bitten off and the other end is lighted. The cigarillo is smoked slowly, the last whiff being the bonne bouche, the breast, la pechuga. The little ends are thrown away (they are indeed little, for a Spanish fore-finger and thumb is quite fire-browned and fire-proof). Some polished exquisites, pollos, use silver holders. These remnants are picked up by the beggar-boys, who make up into fresh cigars the leavings of a thousand mouths. On the Prados and Alamedas urchins always are running about with a rope slowly burning for the benefit of the public. At many of the sheds where water and lemonade are sold, one of these ropes, twirled like a snake round a post, is kept always ignited, as the match of a besieged artilleryman. In the houses of the affluent a small silver chafing-dish, prune batillum, filled with lighted charcoal, is usually placed on a table. This necessity of a light levels all

ranks; it is allowable to stop any person in the streets, for fire, "fuego," "candela;" thus a cigar forms the bond of union, an isthmus of communication between most heterogeneous ranks and ages. Some of the Spanish fair sex are said to indulge in a quiet cigarilla, una pajita; but it is not thought either a sign of a real lady, or of one of rigid virtue, to have recourse to stolen and forbidden pleasures; for whoever makes one basket will make a hundred—quien hace un cesto, hara un ciento.

Nothing exposes a traveller to more difficulty than carrying tobacco in his luggage; whenever he has more than a certain small quantity, let him never conceal it, but declare it at every gate, and be provided with a guia, or permit. Yet all will remember never to be without some cigars, and the better the better; for although any cigar is acceptable, yet a real good one is more tempting than the apple was to Eve. The greater the enjoyment of the smoker, the greater his respect for the donor; a cigar may be given to everybody, whether high or low, and the petaca may be presented, just as a Frenchman of La vieille cour offered his snuff-box, as a prelude to conversation. It is an act of civility, and implies no superiority; there is no humiliation in the acceptance—it is twice blessed" it blesseth him that gives and him that takes ;"—it is the spell wherewith to charm the natives, who are its ready and obedient slaves, and a cigar, like a small kind word spoken in time, works miracles. There is no country in the world where the stranger and traveller can purchase for half-a-crown, half the love and good-will which its investment in tobacco will ensure: a man who grudges or neglects it is neither a philanthropist nor a philosopher.

Offer, therefore, your cigar-case freely and cheerfully, dear traveller, when on the road; but if you value your precious health of mind or body, your mens sana in corpore sano, the combined and greatest blessings in this life, use this bane of this age but sparingly yourself: abuse it not. An early indulgence in this vicious and expensive habit saps life. The deadening influence of this slow but sure poison tampers with every power conferring secretion of brain and body; and although the effects may not be felt at the moment, the cigaresque spendthrift is drawing bills on his constitution which in a few years assuredly must fall due, and then, when too late, he will discover what far higher pleasures, intellectual and physical, have been sacrificed for the filthy weed.

XXIV. SPANISH COSTUME-CLOAK AND MANTILLA.

The Spaniards, in spite of the invasions of French milliners and English tailors, have retained much of a national costume, that picturesque type, which civilization, with its cheap and common-place calico, is, alas! busily effacing. As progress in Spain is slow, fortunately the Capa and Mantilla, nowhere else to be met with in Europe, still remain to gladden the eye of the stranger and artist, and however they may be going out of fashion at Madrid, are fortunately preserved in the provinces.

Dress, from its paramount importance, demands a page. We strongly recommend our readers, ladies as well as gentlemen, whose grand object is to pass in the crowd incognito and unnoticed, to re-rig themselves out