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of ramifications, and carried by these tributary conduits into one of the 6 main trunks, or great rivers all these, with the exception of the Ebro, empty themselves into the Atlantic. The Duero and Tagus, unfortunately for Spain, disembogue in Portugal, thus becoming a portion of a foreign dominion exactly where their commercial importance is the greatest. Philip II. "the prudent," saw the true value of the possession of Portugal, which rounded and consolidated Spain, and insured to her the possession of these outlets of internal produce, and inlets for external commerce. Portugal, that angulus iste, annexed to Spain, gave more real power to his throne than the dominion of entire continents across the Atlantic. Nor has the vision of a Peninsular union ever faded from the cabinets of Spain. The Miño, which is the shortest of these rivers, runs through a bosom of fertility. The Tajo, Tagus, which the fancy of poets has sanded with gold and embanked with roses, tracks its dreary way through rocks and comparative barrenness. The Guadiana creeps through lonely Estremadura, infecting the low plains with miasma and ague. The Guadalquivir eats out its deep banks amid the sunny olive-clad regions of Andalucia.

Spain abounds with brackish streams, Salados, and with salt-mines, the remnants of the saline deposits, after the evaporation of the seawaters. The central soil, strongly impregnated with saltpetre, and always arid, is every day becoming more so, from the Castilian antipathy against trees. No skreen checks the power of evaporation; nothing protects or preserves moisture, The soil, more and more baked and calcined, has in some parts almost ceased to be available for cultivation : from want of plantations and dykes the slopes are liable to denudation of soil after heavy rain. Nothing breaks the descent of the water; hence the naked, barren stone summits of many of the sierras, which, pared and peeled of every particle capable of nourishing vegetation, loom forth, the skeletons of a land in which life seems extinct; not only is the soil thus lost, but the detritus thus washed down forms bars at the mouths of rivers, or chokes up and raises their beds; thus they are rendered liable to overflow their banks, and to convert the adjoining plains into pestilential swamps. The volume of water in the principal rivers of Spain has diminished, and is diminishing. Rivers which once were navigable, are so no longer, while the artificial canals which were to have been substituted remain unfinished: the progress of deterioration advances, as little is done to counteract or amend what every year must render more difficult and expensive, while the means of repair and correction will diminish in equal proportion, from the poverty occasioned by the evil, and by the fearful extent which it will be allowed to attain. The majority of Spanish rivers-torrents rather-scanty during the summer time, flow away with rapidity when filled by rains or melting snow; they are, moreover, much exhausted by being drained off, sangrado, bled, for the purposes of artificial irrigation. The scarcity of rain in the central table-lands diminishes the regular supply of water to the springs of the rivers; and what falls is soon sucked up by a parched, dusty, and thirsty soil, or evaporated by the dryness of the atmosphere. An absence of lakes forms another feature in this country of mountains.

These geographical peculiarities of Spain must be remembered by the traveller, and particularly the existence of the great central eleva

tion, which, when once attained, is apt to be forgotten. The country rises in terraces from the coast, and when once the ascent is accomplished, no real descent takes places. The roads indeed apparently ascend and descend, but the mean height is seldom diminished, and the interior hills or plains are merely the undulations of one mountain. The traveller is often deceived at the apparent low height of snowclad ranges, such as the Guadarama, whose coldness will be accounted for by adding the elevation of their base above the level of the sea. The palace of the Escorial, which is placed at the foot of the Guadarama, and in a seeming plain, stands in reality at 2725 feet above Valencia, while the summer residence of the king at La Granja, in the same chain, is 30 feet higher than the summit of Vesuvius. This, indeed, is a castle in the air—a château en Espagne, and worthy of the most German potentate to whom that element belongs. The mean temperature on the plateau of Spain is as 15°, while that of the coast is as 180 and 19°, in addition to the protection from northern winds which their mountainous backgrounds afford; nor is the traveller less deceived as regards the height of the interior mountains than he is with the table-land plains; his eye wanders over a vast level extent bounded only by the horizon, or a faint blue line of other distant sierras; this space, which appears one level, is intersected with deep ravines, barrancos, in which villages lie concealed, and streams, arroyos, flow unperceived; another important effect of this central elevation is the searching dryness and rarefication of the air. It is often highly prejudicial to strangers: the least exposure, which is very tempting under a burning sun, will bring on ophthalmia, irritable colics, and inflammatory diseases of the lungs and vital organs. Such are the causes of the pulmonia (the endemic disease of Madrid), which carries off the invalid in a few days.

These are the geographical, geological, and natural divisions of the Peninsula, throughout which a leading prevailing principle may be traced. The artificial, political, and conventional arrangement into kingdoms and provinces is so much the work of accident and of absence of design; indeed, one who only looked at the map might sometimes fancy that some of the partitions were expressly devised for the sake of being purposely inconvenient and incongruous.

These provincial divisions were however formed by the gradual union of many smaller and previously independent portions, which have been taken into Spain as a whole, just as our inconvenient counties constitute the kingdom of England. Long habit has reconciled the inhabitants to these divisions, which practically suit them better than any new arrangement, however better calculated according to statistical and geographical principles. The French, when they obtained possession of the Peninsula, with their fondness for departmentalization, tried to remodel and recombine ancient and antipathetic provinces, to carve out neatly and apportion districts, à la mode de Paris, in utter disregard of the wishes, necessities, and prejudices of the respective natives. No sooner was their intrusive rule put to an end, than the Spaniards shook off their paper arrangements, and reverted, like the Italians, to those which pre-existed, and which, however defective in theory, and irregular on the map, suited their inveterate habits. In spite of the failure of the French, Spain has been recently re-arranged, and the

people parcelled out like pieces on a chess-board. It will long, however, defy the power of all the reformers, commissioners, of all the doctrinaires, of all the cortes, effectually to efface the ancient, deeply-impressed divisions, which are engraven on the retentive characters of the inhabitants of each distinct province, who next to hating their neighbours, hate innovations.

The political divisions of former times consisted of 14 large provinces, some of which were called kingdoms, as Granada, Seville, Cordova, Jaen, Murcia, Valencia, &c.: others principalities, like Asturias: others counties, like Barcelona, Niebla, &c.: and lastly, others were called provinces, like New and Old Castile, Estremadura, &c.: Biscay was termed el Senorio. Spain, was then divided by "decree," into 49 provinces, viz.: Alava, Albacete, Alicante, Almeria, Avila, Badajoz, las Baleares, Barcelona, Burgos, Caceres, Cadiz, las Canarias, Castellon de la Plana, Ciudad Real, Cordoba, la Coruña, Cuenca, Gerona, Granada, Guadalajara, Guipuzcoa, Huelva, Huesca, Jaen, Leon, Lérida, Logroño, Lugo, Madrid, Malaga, Murcia, Navarra, Orense, Oviedo, Palencia, Pontevedra, Salamanca, Santander, Segovia, Sevilla, Soria, Tarragona, Teruel, Toledo, Valencia, Valladolid, Vizcaya, Zamora, Zaragoza. There is now a scheme to reduce these 49 into 20 provinces, in the hopes of diminishing departamental expenditure and malversation, and to further the centralizing system, which France has made the fashion.

The present population, with a slow tendency to increase, may be taken at 13,000,000, although Madoz rates it at 15,000,000. Drought, the great bar to the fertility of soil, also tends to check fertility of women. The prevalence, again, of foundling hospitals, and the large number of natural children exposed by unnatural parents in these charnel-houses to a certain massacre of innocents, and the drain of deadly Madrid on the provinces at large, keeps down the scanty population. The revenue may be taken at some 12,000,000l. Badly collected, and at a ruinous per centage, it is exposed to infinite robbery and jobbery. In Spain a little money, like oil, will stick to every finger that handles it.

Spain, in the time of Ferdinand VII. one of the most backward nations in Europe, has since his death made considerable advance. The sleeper has been awakened by the clash of civil wars, and, however far the lagging is yet in arrear, a certain social and administrative progress is perceptible. The details connected with each ministerial department, their separate duties, and what is or ought to be done under each head, Justice, Finance, Home, Board of Trade, War, and Marine, are set forth in the Spanien und seine fortschreitende Entwickelung, Julius v. Minutoli, Berlin, 1852, but the infinite details of the working and social life are put by him in too complimentary a style. Most Spanish things so tinted à la rose on his paper appear perfect; but when tested by practice, many a magazine will turn out to be an arsenal of empty boxes, and many an institution of peace and war be found "wanting in everything most essential at the critical moment." A swelling, pompous show of canvas is spread over a battered, unseaworthy hull. The use made of our Handbook by this industrious Prussian, and also by his countryman Zeigler in his recent Reise in Spanien, 1852, is flattering.

No doubt Spain has taken part in the general progress of the last

score of years, and a marked improvement is perceptible, especially in medical science, and in the national education of the people. While in 1803 only 1 in 340 were educated, it is now, we are told, calculated that to every 1 in 17 the means of elementary schooling is offered. If this be true, then England, the leader of moral civilization as France is of sensual, may well take a leaf from the horn-book of Spain.

TOURS IN SPAIN.

However much the Gotho-Spaniards have destroyed, disfigured, and ill-appreciated the relics of the Moor-in their eyes an infidel invader and barbarian-the remains of that elegant and enlightened people will always constitute to the rest of mankind some of the foremost objects of curiosity in the Peninsula, and are indeed both in number and importance quite unequalled in Europe.

TOUR FOR THE IDLER AND MAN OF PLEASURE.

Perhaps this class of travellers had better go to Paris or Naples. Spain is not a land of fleshly comforts, or of social sensual civilization. Oh! dura tellus Iberia !-God there sends the meat, and the evil one cooks: there are more altars than kitchens--des milliers de prêtres et pas un cuisinier.

Life in the country, there, is a Bedouin Oriental existence. The inland unfrequented towns are dull and poverty-stricken. Bore is the Genius Loci. Boasted Madrid itself is but a dear, second-rate, inhospitable city; the maritime seaports, as in the East, from being frequented by the foreigner, are more cosmopolitan, more cheerful and amusing. Generally speaking, in Spain, as in the East, public amusements are rare. The calm contemplation of a cigar, Mass and telling of beads, and a dolce far niente, siestose indolence, appear to suffice; while to some nations it is a pain to be out of pleasure, to the Spaniard it is a pleasure to be out of painful exertion: leave me, leave me, to repose and tobacco. When however awake, the Alameda, or church show, and the bull-fight, are the chief relaxations. These will be best enjoyed in the Southern provinces, the land also of the song and dance, of bright suns and eyes, wholesale love making, and of not the largest female feet in the world.

Before pointing out other objects to be observed in Spain, and there only, it may be as well to mention what is not to be seen, as there is no worse loss of time than finding this out oneself, after weary chace and wasted hours. Those who expect to find wellgarnished arsenals, libraries, restaurants, charitable or literary institutions, canals, railroads, tunnels, suspension-bridges, polytechnic galleries, pale-ale breweries, and similar appliances and appurtenances of a high state of political, social, and commercial civilization, had better stay at home. In Spain there are few turnpike-trust meetings, quarter-sessions, courts of justice, according to the real meaning of that word, no tread-mills or boards of guardians, no chairmen, directors, masters-extraordinary of the court of chancery, no assistant poor-law commissioners. There are no anti-tobacco-teetotal-temperance-meetings, no auxiliary missionary propagating societies, no dear drab doves of peace societies, or African slave emancipationists, nothing in the blanket

and lying-in asylum line, little, in short, worth a quaker's or a revising barrister of three years' standing's notice. Spain may perhaps interest a political economist, as affording an example of the decline of the wealth of nations, and offering a fine example of errors to be avoided, and a grand field for theories and experimental plans of reform and amelioration. Here is a land where Nature has lavished her prodigality of soil and climate, and which man has for the last four centuries been endeavouring to counteract. El cielo y suelo es bueno, el entresuelo malo. Here the tenant for life and the occupier of the peninsular entresol, abuses, with incurious apathy the goods with which the gods have provided him, and "preserves the country as a terra incognita to naturalists and every branch of ists and ologists. All these interesting branches of inquiry, healthful and agreeable, as being out-of-door pursuits, and bringing the amateur in close contact with nature, offer to embryo authors, who are ambitious to book something new, a more worthy subject than the decies repetita descriptions of bull-fights and the natural history of mantillas, ollas, and ventas. Those who aspire to the romantic, in short, to any of the sublime and beautiful lines (feelings unknown to the natives, and brought in by foreigners themselves), will find subjects enough in wandering with lead-pencil and note-book through this singular country, which hovers between Europe and Africa, between civilisation and barbarism; this land of the green valley and ashy mountain, of the boundless plain and the broken sierra; those Elysian gardens of the vine, the olive, the orange, and the aloe; those trackless, silent, uncultivated wastes, the heritage of the bustard and bittern;-striking indeed and sudden is the change, in flying from the polished monotony of England, to the racy freshness of that still original country, where antiquity treads on the heels of to-day, where Paganism disputes the very altar with Christianity, where indulgence and luxury contend with privation and poverty, where a want of much that is generous, honest, or merciful is blended with the most devoted heroic virtues, - where the cold-blooded cruelty is linked with the fiery passions of Africa, where ignorance and erudition stand in violent and striking contrast.

There let the antiquarian pore over the fossils of thousands of years, the vestiges of Phoenician enterprise, of Roman magnificence, of Moorish elegance, in that land "potted for him, that repository of much elsewhere long obsolete and forgotten, and compare their massiveness and utility with the gossamer Aladdin palaces, the creatures of Oriental gorgeousness and imagination, with which Spain alone can enchant the European F.S.A.; how tender the poetry of her envy-disarming decay, fallen from her high estate, the dignity of a dethroned monarch, borne with unrepining self-respect, the last consolation of the innately noble, which no adversity can take away; how wide and new is the field opened here to the lovers of art, amid the masterpieces of Italian genius, when Raphael and Titian strove to decorate the palaces of Charles, the great emperor of the age of Leo X. Here again is all the living nature of Velazquez and Murillo, truly to be seen in Spain alone; let the artist mark well and note the shells in which these pearls of price shine, the cathedral, where God is worshipped in a manner as nearly befitting his glory as finite man can reach-the Gothic gloom of the cloister, the feudal turret of Avila, the vasty Escorial, the rock-built alcazar of im