to our suggestions at page 14, and prepare for meeting little sympathy from the so-called better classes. Often, in truth, will the man of the pencil sigh, and say, why will not the people show us themselves, their real homes, and ways? why will they conceal what the rest of the world wishes most to see and sketch? Servile imitators of the foreigner, whom they affect to despise, they seem in practice to deny their fatherland and nationality. They bore us with their pale copies of the long-tailed coats of London, and the commonplace columns of the Paris Bourse. They deluge us with all we abhor, and hide the attractive panorama which Spain presents in her own dear self, when her children, all tag, tassel, and filagree, dance under fig-tree and vine, while behind cluster Gothic ruins or Moorish arches, scenes and sights ravishing to all eyes save those of the Español ilustrado; his newly enlightened and civilized vision, blind to all this native beauty, colour, and originality, sees in it only the degradation of poverty and decay; nay resenting the admiration of the stranger, from which he infers some condescending compliment to picturesque barbarians, he intreats the inspection of his paletôt, or drags him away to sketch some spick and span academical abortion, to raise which some gem of ancient art has been levelled.

Military and naval men, and all who take interest (and what Englishman does not ?) in the fair fame of our arms, must ever connect the Peninsula with one great association, the War of Giants waged there by Wellington, and all who desire to know the real rights of it, may stow in their saddlebags the well-compiled Annals of the Peninsular Campaigns, by Hamilton, revised by F. Hardman, 1849. Those who cannot, will at least find that the author of this Handbook, who has performed the pilgrimage to these hallowed sites, has, so far as limited space permits, recorded facts..

No. 9. SHOOTING AND FISHING TOURS.

Although game is not preserved in Spain as among ourselves, it is abundant; nature, by covering the earth with aromatic brushwood in vast extents of uninhabited, uncultivated land, has afforded excellent cover to the wild beasts of the field and fowls of the air; they are poached and destroyed at all seasons, and in every unfair manner, and more for pot considerations, than sport-especially near the towns. "The fera natura flourish, however, wherever the lords of the creation are rude and rare. The game takes care of itself, and is abundant, not from being strictly preserved, but from not being destroyed by scientific sportsmen. Spain was always the land of the rabbit (conejo), which the Phoenicians saw here for the first time, and hence some have traced the origin of the name Hispania, to the Sephan, or rabbit of the Hebrew. This animal figured on the early coins of the cuniculosa Celti Iberia, (Catullus, xxxv. 18.) Large ships freighted with them were regularly sent from Cadiz for the supply of Rome (Strabo, iii. 214). The rabbit is still the favourite shooting of Spaniards, who look invariably to the larder. Pheasants are very rare a bird requiring artificial feeding cannot be expected to thrive in a country where half the population is underfed. Redlegged partridges and hares are most plentiful. The mouths of the great rivers swarm with aquatic birds. In Andalucia the multitude of bustards and woodcocks is incredible. There is very little difficulty in procuring leave to shoot in Spain; a licence to carry a gun is required of every native, but it is seldom necessary for an Englishman. The moment a Spaniard gets out of town he shoulders a gun, for the custom of going armed is immemorial. Game is usually divided into great and small: the Caza mayor includes deer, venados, wild boars, javalis, and the chamois tribe, cabras montañeses: by Caza menor is understood foxes, rabbits, partridges, and such like "small deer." Winter fowl is abundant wherever there is water, and the flights of quails and woodcocks, codornices y gallinetas, quite marvellous. The Englishman will find shooting in the neigh

bourhood of Seville and Gibraltar. There is some difficulty in introducing our guns and ammunition into Spain, even from Gibraltar.

The lover of the angle will find virgin rivers in Spain, that jumble of mountains, down the bosoms of which they flow; most of these abound in trout, and those which disembogue into the Bay of Biscay in salmon. As good tackle is not to be procured in Spain, the angler will bring out everything from England. The best localities are Plasencia, Avila, Cuenca, and the whole country from El Vierzo, Gallicia, the Asturias, the Basque provinces, and Pyrenean valleys.

There is very little good ancient sculpture in Spain, and there never was much; for when the Peninsula became a Roman province, the arts of Greece were in the decline, and whatever sculpture was executed here was the work either of Romans or Spaniards, who never excelled in that art. Again, most of whatever statuary was introduced into the Peninsula by the Trajans and Adrians, was destroyed by the Vandal Goths, who, as Christians, abhorred the graven images of pagan gods, and hated Rome, its works, and especially those connected with the fine arts, to which they attributed degeneracy and effeminacy; thus, when they struck down the world-oppressor, they cast the statues of its chiefs from the pedestal, and the idols from the altar. The Goth was supplanted by the Moor, to whose creed iconoclasm was essential; he swept away whatever had escaped from his predecessor; nay, the pagan fragments and papal substitutes were alike treated with studied insult, either buried, to prevent resurrection, in the foundations of their buildings, or worked in as base materials for their city walls. The Spaniards as a people have no great archæological tendency. Born and bred in a country whose soil is strewed with the ruins of creeds and dynasties, and their edifices, they view the relics with the familiarity and contempt of the Bedouin, as old stones, which he neither admires nor preserves; if they excavate at all, it is in hopes of finding buried hoards of coin; accordingly, whenever mere antique remains are dug up, they have too often been reburied, or those which any rare alcalde of taste may have collected, are left at his death to chance and decay; in the provincial towns the fragments are lumpel together after the fashion of a mason's stoneyard. Classification and arrangement are not Spanish or Oriental qualities.

The Church, again, almost the sole patron of sculpture, only encouraged that kind which best served its own purpose. She had little feeling for ancient art for itself, which, if over-studied, necessarily has a tendency to reproduce a heathen character and anti-Christian. Cathedral and convent also, who had their own models of Astartes, Minervas, and Jupiters, in their images of the Virgin and saints, abhorred a rival idol. Thus Florez and other antiquarians (the best of whom have been clergymen and busied about the archæology of their

own Church and religion constantly apologise for bestowing attention on such un-Christian inquiries.

The historical research of Spaniards has hitherto been seldom critical; they loved to flounder about Tubal and Hercules; and when people have recourse to mythology, it is clear that history will not serve their ends. The discussion and authenticity of a monk's bone have long been of more importance than a relic of Phidias. Yet Spain may be said to be "potted " for antiquarians, as the conservative climate of many portions of the Peninsula rivals even that of Egypt, in the absence of damp," your whoreson destroyer." Thus Roman bridges, aqueducts, tanks, and causeways exist in actual use, almost unimpaired; nay, even the fragile Tarkish, the plaster-of-Paris wall-embroidery, the "diaper, or pargetting," of the Moors, often looks, after the lapse of ten centuries, wherever man has not destroyed it, almost as fresh and perfect as when first put up. The catena of monuments from the cradle of the restored monarchy is almost complete; and, such is the effect of climate, that they even disappoint from lacking the venerable ærugo of age to which we are accustomed in a less beneficent climate; so many things in Spain look younger by centuries than they really are.

These

The best and most national sculpture of Spain is either mediæval or consists of religious subjects, sepulchral monuments or graven images; unfortunately many of the former, from being placed in convents founded expressly for the burial place of nobles and prelates, were first mutilated by the enemy and have perished since the suppression of monasteries. The Spanish name for a site or vault destined to many burials of one family, is oddly enough termed a Pantheon. Some of the most magnificent mausoleums were executed by Italian artists from Genoa and Florence, to whom several Spaniards proved worthy rivals. memorials are among the choice things to be observed. The Christian sentiment rules impressively in them; there is no aping the creed or costume of Pagan antiquity,-everything speaks of the orthodox faith of the period and people; the prelate and the soldier alike lie stretched on the bed of death, and the hands clasped in prayer, now that sword and crozier are laid aside, indicate a trust in another life. Emblems of human fragility they lay flat and dead, while faith was alive but as infidelity crept in, worldly pride kept pace, and sepulchral figures began to rise, first on elbows, then on seats, to stand boldly bolt upright at last.

Many of these fine Spanish sepulchres have been carefully and accurately drawn by Don Valentin Carderera, to be hereafter, we trust, engraved, and thus in some sort preserved.

SPANISH SCULPTURE.

Spanish sculpture is so peculiar in one branch, and has hitherto been so little critically considered, that the attention of the scholar and archæologist may be called to it in a page or two. This branch includes the holy images, and these Simulacros y Imagenes, are as little changed in name and object as the simulacra et imagines of the Pagan Romans. Some are destined to be worshiped in niches and on altars, others to be carried about in the streets by cofradias, or brotherhoods, for adoration during religious ceremonies, and especially during passion week, SPAIN.-I.

D

whence such graven figures are called PASOs. They are the identical Coava, the eidwλa, the idols which the lust of the human eye required, the doli or cheats of the devil, whence S. Isidoro derives the name of an invention which nowhere now rules more triumphantly than in his own Seville.

The great demand for these carvings has induced many first-rate artists in Spain to devote themselves to this branch of sculpture; hence Cano, Montañes, Roldan, Becerra, Juni, and Fernandez rank exactly as Dædalus, Emilis, and others did among the ancients. The fine specimens of their works have a startling reality; the stone statues of monks actually seem fossils of a once living being; many others are exquisitely conceived and executed; unfortunately, from the prudery of Spanish draperies, much of the anatomical excellence is concealed from being dressed and painted; strictly speaking, they attempt too much. The essence of statuary is form, and to clothe a statue, said Byron, is like translating Dante: a marble statue never deceives; the colouring it does, and is a device beneath the severity of sculpture. The imitation of life may surprise, but, like colossal toys, barbers' blocks, and wax-work figures, when bad, it chiefly pleases the ignorant and children of a large or small growth, to whom a painted doll gives more pleasure than the Apollo Belvidere. The resemblance is obvious, and cannot give pleasure, from want of the transparency of skin and the absence of life. The imitation, so exact in form and colour, suggests the painful idea of a dead body, which a statue does not. Most of these images appear to strangers at first revolting or ridiculous; but the genius of the Spaniard seeks the material and natural rather than spiritual and ideal, and the masses require objects of adoration suited to their defective taste and knowledge, so their sapient church has largely provided for their cravings—hence the legions of tinsel caricatures of the human and divine which encumber the houses of God, but which delight and affect the nation at large, much more than a statue by Phidias. The illiterate congregations gaze with a sincere faith; they come to worship, not to criticise, and bow implicitly down, with all their bodies and souls, before the stocks and stones set up for them by their pastors and masters. The devotional feeling prevails entirely over the aesthetic; and at all events these tangible and bodily representations of persons and events connected with the Scriptures and church legends, realised them to those who could see, but not read, and thus did their work well before the schoolmaster was abroad. Now they have served their turn, and when the dislocated and desecrated groups are moved from the temple to the museum, for which they were never intended-when they are thus placed in a secular gallery, the original sentiment is lost, as well as the fitness and meaning of the religio loci. In their original chapels they had a speaking reference to the tutelar patron or miracle; but the cheat, of their tinsel colours and clothing, which was concealed in the solemn semi-gloom, is revealed in the broad daylight, and they look like monks turned out of their convent into the wide world. Many of the smaller έoava are preserved in glass cases, after the fashion of surgical preparations.

The works of the following sculptors are the best deserving of notice; they flourished or died about the period affixed to their names, as given by Cean Bermudez, to whom refer for details :—