Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 410, December 1849
MY DREAM
Some of the friends here assembled are well aware – why should I conceal it? – that, for several months past, a load has been pressing on my mind. They are also aware of the cause. I certainly have an impression that I shall never see England again. But how that impression began, they are not aware. What I am now about to relate will afford the explanation. Yet what is the subject of my narrative? A dream – a mere dream; and a dream easily accounted for by the circumstances in which it was dreamt. So it is. Colonel d'Arbley knows, the Major knows, that I never shrank from peril. I have faced death; to all appearance, certain death. And, unless I felt prepared to do the like again, I should not have been now returning to the army; – no, I would rather have quitted the service. Death I am prepared at any time to meet; yet this presentiment of death is a burden upon my spirits. By the bye, my glass is empty. Hadn't I better replenish it ere I begin?
You are aware, sir, that ill health, the effect of hard service and hard knocks, obliged me to return to England last spring. In the course of the autumn, I quitted Cheltenham, and resided at Woolwich. There, I was at a military party. We kept it up all night. Next morning, I was unexpectedly summoned to London; and, on my arrival, found work cut out for me, – papers to be prepared – public offices to be visited – lots of going about – lots of writing – all wanted instantly. Some parliamentary wretch had moved for returns, and I was to get them up. In short, the work could be done in time only by my again sitting up all night. It was on the day after these two sleepless nights that I had my dream. Where, do you think? And at what hour? At noon, with the sun shining above my head, on a bench in St James's Park.
I had just been calling in at the Horse-Guards for a chat, my business completed, the excitement over, and was proceeding westward on foot along the Birdcage Walk, when I began to feel nervous and done up. All at once, my faculties experienced a sort of collapse. My whole frame was seized with a deadly chill; I shivered spasmodically; my strength seemed gone; and I became most enormously drowsy. Just at that moment – I suppose it was some anniversary, a birthday perhaps – bang, bang, the Park guns commenced firing, close at hand. In the midst of the firing, I sat down on a bench, and, in no time, dropped asleep. Then began my dream.
It was a general action. The curious circumstance is, that I was still in the Park. The guns firing a holiday salute became the French position, which occupied the plateau of a low range of hills. At the foot of this range, in an avenue extending along its foot, was I alone. The firing went on, bang-banging, now no longer a feu-de-joie– the report was that of shotted guns. I heard not only their discharge, but the moan of the balls, and the whisk of the grape; yes, and the rattle of musketry, the shouts of men charging, and all that kind of thing. I saw the dust, the smoke, the occasional flash, quite as much as you can see of any battle if you're in it. Yet, all this time, I knew I was in the Birdcage Walk. Presently, in the direction of the Green Park, I heard a more distant cannonade, which was that of the British position. It was now time to change mine; for some of the shot from our guns began to pass up the avenue, close to me, tearing, rasping up the gravel, crashing among the trees, cutting down boughs, and rifting the trunks. Yet something kept me fixed. At length, looking in the direction of the British position, I distinctly saw a round-shot come hopping up the avenue – hop – hop – hop – nearer and nearer – but slowly – slowly – slowly; it seemed all but spent. Just when I thought it had done hopping, it took one more jump, and, with a heavy pitch, fetched me an awful polt in the right side. That moment I felt that I was a dead man; killed in action, yet by a friendly ball, and while sitting on a bench in St James's Park! The vision now passed. The noise and firing ceased; troops, smoke, dust – all the concomitants of combat vanished; the Birdcage Walk and its beautiful environs resumed their ordinary appearance.
Presently, while still sitting on the bench, I was accosted by a tall sallow-looking gentleman in black, who smirked, bowed, and handed me a letter with a broad black border – the seal, a tombstone and a weeping willow. It was addressed to myself – an invitation to attend a funeral. I pleaded my engagements – wanted to get back to Woolwich – begged to be excused. 'Sir,' said he, in courteous accents, 'you really must oblige us. Unless you are present, the funeral cannot take place. Hope you won't disappoint us, sir. I am the undertaker, sir.' I somehow felt that I had no choice, and went. The gentleman in black met me at the door.
Other parties were assembled at the mansion; but not one of the company – I thought it rather strange – either spoke to me, or looked at me, or showed the least consciousness of my presence. The undertaker was all attention; handed round black kid gloves; fitted first one with a hatband, then another; and, last of all, addressed me: 'Now, sir, if you please, this way, sir; we only wait for you, sir.' I followed him. He led me into an adjoining apartment, where stood the coffin, surrounded by mutes. I wished to read the name on the lid, but was prevented by the pall.
How we got to the place of interment, I recollect not. The only thing I remember is this: as I saw the coffin carried down stairs, hoisted into the hearse, conveyed, hoisted out, and at last deposited by the side of the grave – every movement, every jolt, every thump, seemed to jar my whole system with a peculiar and horrid thrill. The service was performed, the coffin was lowered, the grating of the ropes grated upon my very soul; and the dust sprinkled by the sexton on its lid blew into my mouth and eyes, as I stood by the brink of the grave, and looked on. The service concluded, the undertaker, attendants, and company withdrew; and, what d'ye think? – there was I left remaining in the burial-ground, with no companion but a solitary gravedigger! He set to work, and began shovelling in the clods, to fill the grave. I heard their thud; I seemed to feel it, as they rattled in quick succession on the lid of the coffin.
'You'll soon be filled in and all right, old feller,' said the gravedigger, as he proceeded with his work.
A strange idea had gradually occupied my mind. It seemed absurd – impossible; and yet it offered the only conceivable solution of my sensations at that horrid moment. I addressed the gravedigger, —
'My friend,' said I, 'have the goodness to inform me WHOSE funeral this is.'
'Whose funeral?' replied the gravedigger. 'Come, that's a good un. Vhy, it's YOUR OWN.' – I'll trouble you for a little more punch."
SPAIN UNDER NARVAEZ AND CHRISTINA
The condition of Spain since the last French revolution, and especially since the commencement of the present year, has been taken as a theme of unbounded self-gratulation by persons who ascribe her tranquillity and alleged prosperity to their own patriotism and skill. For many months past, the friends, organs, and adherents of the dominant Camarilla have not ceased to call attention to the flourishing state of the country; repeatedly challenging the Continent to produce such another example of good government, internal happiness, and external dignity, as is now afforded by the fortunate land which their patrons and masters rule. When so many European states are revolutionised and unsettled, it is indeed pleasant to hear this good report of one which we have not been accustomed to consider a model for the imitation of its neighbours. Delightful it is to learn that Spain has cast her blood-stained slough of misrule, discord, and corruption, and glitters in renovated comeliness, an example to the nations, a credit and a blessing to herself, a monument of the disinterested exertions and unwearied self-devotion of her sage and virtuous rulers. We are anxious to believe that these glowing accounts are based upon fact, and worthy of credence – not a delusion and a blind; and that the happiness and prosperity so ostentatiously vaunted exist elsewhere than in the invention of those interested in proclaiming them. But we cannot forget that the evidence produced is entirely ex-parte, or lose sight of the great facility with which the French and English press and public accord credit and praise to the present government of Spain, simply on its own or its partisans' assertions of the great things it has done, and is about to do. It is not easy to obtain a correct knowledge of the condition of the bulk of the Spanish nation. That the country prospers means, in the mouths of the schemers and place-hunters of Madrid, and of the smugglers of the frontier, that there is a brisk flow of coin into their own pockets. That it is tranquil signifies that no rebellious banner is openly displayed in its territory. No matter that the government is carried on by shifts, by forced loans and forestalled taxes and ruinous contracts; that the public servants of all grades, irregularly paid, and with bad examples before them, peculate and take bribes; that the widow and the orphan, the maimed soldier and the superannuated pensioner, continually with long arrears due to them, are in rags, misery, and starvation; that to the foreign creditor is given, almost as a favour, no part of the interest due upon the capital he has disbursed, but the interest on a small portion of the accumulation of unpaid dividends; that the streets and highways swarm with mendicants, and are perilous from the multitude of robbers; that the insecurity of life and property in country-places drives the rich proprietors into the towns, and prevents their expending their capital in the improvement of their property; and that the peasantry, deprived of instruction, example, and encouragement, deprived too, by the badness and scarcity of the communications, of an advantageous market for their produce, sink, as a natural consequence, daily deeper into sloth, ignorance, and vice. What matter all these things? The miseries of the suffering many are lightly passed over by the prosperous few: in Spain the multitude have no voice, no remedy but open and armed resistance. Thus it is that Spanish revolutions and popular outbreaks startle by their suddenness. Until the victim openly rebels, his murmurs are unheard: the report of his musket is the first intimation of his misery. In England and in France, abuses, oppression, and injustice, of whatever kind, cannot long be kept from the light. It is very different in Spain, under the present régime. There the liberty of the press is purely nominal, and no newspaper dares denounce an abuse, however flagrant, or speak above its breath on subjects whose discussion is unpleasing to the governing powers. On the first indication of such presumption, number after number of the offending journal is seized, fines are inflicted, and if the editors audaciously persevere, they may reckon with tolerable certainty on exile or a prison. On the other hand, the ministerial and Camarilla organs, those of the Duke of Valencia and of Señor Sartorius, and of the dowager queen, and even of the dowager's husband – for his Grace of Rianzares follows the fashion, and has a paper at his beck, (partly for his assistance in those stock exchange transactions whose pursuit has more than once dilapidated his wife's savings,) – papers of this stamp, we say, carefully disguise or distort all facts whose honest revelation would be unpleasant or discreditable to their employers. From the garbled and imperfect statements of these journals, which few Frenchmen, and scarcely any Englishmen, ever see, the "Madrid correspondents" of French and English newspapers – not a few of whom reside in Paris or London – compile their letters, and editors derive their data (for want of better sources) when discussing the condition and prospects of Spain. Hence spring misapprehension and delusion. Spain is declared to be prosperous and happy; and Spanish bondholders flatter themselves, for the hundredth time, with, the hope of a satisfactory arrangement – to which their great patience certainly entitles them, and which they might as certainly obtain were the ill-administered revenues of Spain so directed as to flow into the public coffers, and not into the bottomless pockets of a few illustrious swindlers, and of the legion of corrupt underlings who prop a system founded on immorality and fraud. The system is rotten to the core, and the prosperity of Spain is a phantom and a fallacy. Not that she is deficient in the elements of prosperity: on the contrary, the country has abundant vitality and resource, and its revenue has been for years increasing, in the teeth of misgovernment, and of a prohibitive tariff, which renders the customs' revenue almost nominal. But it matters little how many millions are collected, if they be intercepted on their way to the exchequer, or squandered and misappropriated as soon as gathered in.
In the absence of better evidence as to the real state of the country than that whose untrustworthiness we have denounced, the narrative of an unprejudiced and intelligent traveller in Spain has its value; and although the title of a recently published book by Mr Dundas Murray,2 proclaimed it to refer but to one province, yet, as that province comprises many of the principal Spanish posts and cities, we hoped to have found in his pages confirmation or correction of our opinion as to the true condition of the nation, and more particularly of those middling and lower classes whose welfare is too frequently lost sight of in the struggles and projects of political factions. Since those pleasant "Gatherings" in which many home-truths were told with a playful and witty pen, no book on Spain worth naming has appeared; and if Mr Murray's visit be recent, which he does not enable us to decide, he had abundant opportunity during his pretty long residence and active rambles – aided, as we learn he was, by thorough familiarity with the language – to collect materials for a work of no common interest and importance. He has preferred, however, to skim the surface: the romantic and the picaresque, sketches on the road and traditions of Moorish Spain, are evidently more to his taste than an investigation of the condition of the people, and an exposure of social sores and official corruption. His book is a slight but unaffected production, containing much that has been said before, a little that has not, some tolerable descriptions of scenery, a number of legends borrowed from Conde and other chroniclers, and here and there a little personal incident which may almost pass muster as an adventure. Young Englishmen of Mr Murray's class and standard of ability, who start on a tour in Spain, are of course on the look-out for the picturesque, and think it incumbent on them to embody their experiences and observations in a book. Such narratives are usually praiseworthy for good feeling and gentlemanly tone; and indeed would be almost perfect, did they combine with those qualities the equally desirable ones of vigour and originality. But doubtless we shall do well to take them as they come, and be thankful; for it is not every one who has fortitude and courage to travel for any length of time in the flea-and-robber-ridden land of Spain. And as we cannot expect to meet every day with a Widdrington, a Carnarvon, or a Ford, so we must welcome a Murray when he presents himself, look leniently upon his repetitions, and be grateful if he occasionally affords us a hint or a text. It is perhaps a pity that Englishmen do not more frequently turn their steps towards the Peninsula, instead of pertinaciously pursuing the beaten tracks of Italy, Switzerland, the Levant; the furthest of which is now within the leave-of-absence ramble of a desultory guardsman or jaded journalist, covetous of purer air than Fleet Street or St James's afford. Spain, we can assure all who are rovingly inclined – and Mr Murray, we are certain, will corroborate our word – has at least as much to interest as any of the above regions, and much more than most of them. And assuredly an influx of British travellers would, by putting piastres into the pockets of the aborigines, do more than anything else towards improving roads, towards cleansing ventas of the chinches and other light cavalry, against whose assaults Mr Murray was fain to cuirass himself in a flannel bag, towards ameliorating the Iberian cuisine, and diminishing the numbers and audacity of the knights of the road. For, as regards the last-named peril, greatly increased by the dispersion of the republican and Carlist bands, and by the misery prevalent in the country, Englishmen, if they have the reputation of travelling with well-filled pockets and portmanteaus, have also that of fighting stoutly in defence of their property; and if they would make it a rule to travel two or three together, with light purses, a sharp look-out, and a revolver a-piece – or, as Mr Murray and his companion did, each with a double-barrel on his shoulder – they might rest assured there are not many bands of brigands on Spanish roads bold enough to bid them, in the classical phrase of those gentry, "Boca abajo!" which means, freely interpreted, "Down in the dust, and with the dust!" But let the traveller be on his guard against a surprise, and, to that end, avoid as much as possible all night-travelling, especially by diligence, which to many may seem the safest, on account of the society it insures, but which is in reality the most dangerous mode of journeying, for there the pusillanimous hamper and impede the resistance contemplated by the bold, and the bravest man can do little when jammed in amongst screaming women and terrified priests, with a carbine pointing in at each window of the vehicle. We find Mr Murray and his friend riding unmolested through an ambuscade where, a couple of hours later, three calesas full of travellers, including a colonel in the army, were assailed by no more than three highwaymen, and deliberately and unresistingly plundered. For the traveller in Spain there is nothing like the saddle, whether for safety, independence, or comfort; and as to time, why, if he is short of that, he had better not visit the country, for there all things go despacio, which means not with despatch but leisurely, and for one "to-day" he will get twenty "to-morrows," and most of these will never come. And, above all, let him put no faith in the word police, which, in Spain, is a mere figure of speech, the thing it indicates never appearing until it is not wanted; and let him not reckon on an escort, which is rarely to be obtained even by paying, and on roads notoriously dangerous, except by tedious formality of application, to which few will have patience to submit. And even if granted, it usually, as in the case of the calesas above cited, is either too weak to be useful, or lags behind, or fairly turns tail. To which prudent course it is more than suspected that the faithless guards, who are mostly pardoned robbers, are frequently stimulated by promise of a share of the spoil. Nor are they, if all tales be true, the only class in Spain whose duty it is to protect the public, and who foully betray their trust. During this present year of 1849, cited as so prosperous a one in Spain, robberies in the capital, and on the roads within a radius of twenty leagues around it, have been so numerous and audacious, and perpetrated with such impunity, that the finger of public suspicion has pointed very high, and the strangest tales – which to English ears would sound incredible – have been circulated of the collusion of personages whose rank and position would, in any other country, preclude the idea of participation, however secret and indirect, in gains so lawless and iniquitous. But in this, as in many other matters peculiar to the Peninsula, although the few may be convinced, the many will always doubt, and proof it is of course scarcely possible to obtain. In so extensive and thinly peopled a land as Spain, and which has been so long a prey to civil war and insurrection, security of travelling in rural districts, and on cross roads, is only to be obtained by increased cultivation of the soil, and by improving the condition of the peasantry. But in the capital, and on the roads leading to it, and in the towns and villages, some degree of law and order might be expected to prevail. A glance at the Spanish papers, any time for the last six months, proves the contrary to be the case. Their columns are filled with accounts of atrocious assassinations and barefaced robberies in the very streets of Madrid; of diligences stopped, and travellers plundered and abused; of farmers and others carried off to the mountains in open day, and detained until ransomed; and with letters from all parts of the country, complaining of the insecurity of life and property, and of the sluggishness and inefficiency of the authorities. Such statements are of course rarely admitted into the ministerial prints, to read which one would imagine that the very last malefactor in the country had just fallen into the hands of the guardias civiles, and that a virgin might conduct a gold-laden mule from Santander to Cadiz, unguarded and unmolested.
Since the death of Ferdinand, no such opportunity of improving and regenerating Spain has been afforded to a Spanish ministry, really solicitous of their country's good, as during the present year. It opened inauspiciously enough; with an impoverished exchequer, a ruinously expensive army, Cabrera and ten thousand Carlists in arms in eastern Spain, and with insurgent bands, of various political denominations, springing up in Navarre and other provinces. There was every prospect of a bloody civil war in early spring. But causes, similar to those which, on former occasions, had frustrated their efforts, again proved fatal to the hopes of the Carlist party. With great difficulty, and with little aid beyond that of contributions levied in Catalonia, Cabrera had subsisted his troops through the winter. But, when spring approached, money was needed for other purposes besides mere rations. In the civil wars of Spain, gold has often been far more efficacious than steel to overcome difficulties and gain a point. But gold was hard to obtain. Revolutions had raised its value; and those who possessed it were loath to embark it in so hazardous a speculation as the restoration of Count Montemolin. This prince, who, for a Spanish Bourbon, is not deficient in natural ability, has one unfortunate defect, which more than counterbalances his good qualities. Infirm of purpose, he is led by a clique of selfish and unworthy advisers, some of whom – evil counsellors handed down to him by his father – have retained all the influence they acquired over him in his childhood. Amidst the petty wranglings and deplorable indecisions of these men, time wore away. A sum of money (no very large one) was all that was needed to achieve a great object, which would at once have multiplied fifty-fold the prestige of the Montemolinist cause, and have placed vast resources at the disposal of its partisans. Between the sum required and the advantage certain to be obtained, the disproportion was enormous. Letter after letter was received from Cabrera and other promoters of the Montemolinist cause in France and Spain, urging and imploring that, at any sacrifice, the money should be procured. But this was beyond the power of the incapable ojalateros who surrounded the young pretender. Without conduct, energy, or dignity, they had not a single quality calculated to obtain credit or induce confidence. In all their attempts they miserably failed. At last, towards the end of March, a rumour was spread abroad that Count Montemolin was on his way to Catalonia, to head his faithful adherents. Soon this was confirmed by newspaper paragraphs, and presently came a romantic account of his arrest on the frontier, when about to enter Spain. The next news was that of his return to England, which was almost immediately followed by an article in a London paper, denying point-blank that he had ever left this country, declaring that the journey was a hoax, and that the Spanish prince had been arrested by proxy. And although this article, which was extensively copied by the press of England and the Continent, elicited an angry contradiction from a hanger-on of Count Montemolin, yet many persons, of those most versed in the intricacies of Spanish intrigue, were convinced that its statements were founded on fact, and that the Count was in reality secreted in London at the very time he was supposed to be travelling towards the Pyrenees. And some of his own partisans, who credited the reality of the journey, declared their conviction from the first to have been, that he would be betrayed before he got through France, since by that means only could certain individuals, who dared not refuse to accompany him, hope to return to the flesh-pots and security of their London home, and to avoid encountering the perils and hardships of mountain warfare. The abortive journey or clumsy hoax, whichever it was, gave the finishing stroke to the Catalonian insurrection. Cabrera, seeing plainly that nothing was to be hoped from the feeble and pusillanimous junta of advisers who swayed and bewildered Count Montemolin by their intrigues and dissensions, found it necessary, after sending repeated and indignant letters and messages to London, to abandon a contest which it was impossible for him to maintain single-handed, and from which many subordinate chiefs, and a large portion of his troops, had already seceded. His little army fell to pieces, and he himself fell into the hands of the French authorities, by whom, after a brief detention, he was allowed to go at large. The game was now good for General Concha and his fifty thousand men. The scattering and hunting down of the broken bands of insurgents was exactly the sort of amusement they liked; a fine pretext for magnificent bulletins, and the easiest possible way of gaining praise, honours, and decorations. Before summer came, Catalonia was quiet. The most vigorous effort made by the Carlists since the Convention of Bergara; the one offering the best chances of success, and on which the very last resources of the party, (even, it is said, to a few jewels and pictures of price – the last relics of princely splendour,) had been expended; the effort, in short, of whose happy issue such sanguine expectations were entertained, that some of the leading adherents of the cause declared that, "if they failed this time, they deserved never to succeed," had terminated in complete abortion. On the sierras of Spain not a Carlist cockade was to be seen; in the coffers of the party not a dollar remained. Many of its most valued members, disgusted by the weakness of their prince, and by the baseness of his councillors, withdrew from its ranks, and made their peace with the existing government. And now the most steadfast well-wishers of Count Montemolin are compelled to admit, that few contingencies are less probable than his installation on the Spanish throne.
Delivered from the disquietude and expense of civil war, backed by an overwhelming majority in the Chambers, and having no longer anything to fear from that "English influence," of which the organs of Christina and Louis Philippe had made such a bugbear, the Spanish government, it was expected, would deem the moment favourable for those reforms so greatly needed by the country. It was full time, and it was now quite practicable, to adopt extensive and systematic measures of retrenchment in the various departments of the administration; to reduce the army; to regularise and lessen the expense of collecting the revenue, which, like a crop intrusted to negligent and dishonest reapers, is wasted and pillaged in the gathering; to encourage labour and industry; to stimulate private enterprise, to which the tranquillity of Spain was sure to give a first impetus; to encourage and co-operate in the formation of roads and canals, so essential to agriculture, which there languishes for want of them; to give a death-blow to smuggling by an honest and sweeping reform of the absurd tariff; and, if they could not give money to the public creditor, at least to come to a loyal understanding and arrangement with him, instead of vexatiously deluding him with fair promises, never kept. Instead of at once, and in good faith, setting about these, and many other equally requisite reforms, in whose prosecution they would have been supported by a large number of their present political opponents; instead of riveting their attention on the internal maladies and necessities of the country, and striving strenuously for their cure, – turning a deaf ear to the clamorous voices abroad in Europe, and thanking heaven that the position and weakness of their country allowed her to stand aloof from the struggles of her neighbours – what did the Spanish government? They acted like a needy spendthrift who, having suddenly come into possession of a little gold, fancies himself a Crœsus, and squanders it in luxurious superfluities. They had come into possession of a little tranquillity – in Spain a treasure far rarer and more precious than gold – and, instead of using it for their necessities, they lavished it abroad. Aping wealthy and powerful nations, they aspire to interfere in the domestic affairs of others, before thinking of putting their own house in order. Rome is to be the scene of their exploits, religion their pretext, the Pope the gainer by their exertions. From their eagerness in the crusade, it might be supposed that Rome and the pontiff had some great and peculiar claim on the gratitude and exertions of Spain; with which country, on the contrary, ever since the death of Ferdinand of petticoat-making memory, until quite recently, they have been on the worst possible terms – the Holy See having openly supported the cause of Don Carlos, refused the recognition of Isabella, and the investiture of the prelates she appointed, and played a variety of unfriendly pranks, of no material consequence, but yet exceedingly painful and galling to the bigoted portion of the nation, who considered their chances of salvation not a little compromised, so long as their government was thus in evil odour and non-communication with the head of the Church. Altogether, the attitude assumed by Rome towards Spain, since 1833, was most detrimental to Queen Isabella, because it sent a vast number of priests (always active and influential partisans) to the side of the Pretender. Considering these circumstances, when Rome at last, at its own good time, and in consideration of concessions, and also because it suffered pecuniarily by the duration of the rupture, again took Spain into favour, and acknowledged her queen as Most Catholic, Spain, in her impoverished condition, would surely have sufficiently responded by her best wishes for the prosperity of the Pope, and for the safety of his pontifical throne. She might also, if it was desired, have sent that poetical statesman, M. Martinez de la Rosa, to display his eloquence in Italian counsels. But Spanish pride, the bigotry of the queen-mother and her son-in-law, the fanaticism of some, and the hypocrisy of others, could not be contented with this. Pinched, starved, indebted, as Spain is, nothing would serve but to despatch to Italy, at heavy cost, a useless corps d'armée. Little enough has it achieved. The troops have got a bad name by their excesses, and the generals have been treated slightingly, almost contemptuously, by the French commanders, who, doubtless, at sight of the half-disciplined Dons, felt old animosities revive, and thought how much they should prefer a trip to the Trocadero to this inglorious and unprofitable Italian campaign. To console General Cordova and his staff, however, for the necessity of playing second fiddle to the French, they have been praised, and caressed, and decorated by his Holiness, and by that enlightened monarch, Ferdinand of Naples; and they have been allowed to send an aide-de-camp to Barcelona for three nice little Spanish uniforms, which they are to have the honour of presenting to three nice little Neapolitan princes. Whilst this popinjay general and his men-at-arms idle their time, and spend their pay, in Italian quarters, the Moors besiege and cannonade the Spanish possessions in Africa, within sight of the Andalusian coast, whence not a soldier is sent to the assistance of the beleaguered garrisons. A most characteristic sample of "things of Spain." In this country we are blind to the propriety of leaving your own barn to be pulled down, whilst you build up your neighbour's mansion. And, to our matter-of-fact comprehension, it seems dishonest to waste money in a frivolous foreign expedition, when starving creditors are knocking at the door. But we are a shop-keeping people, and it is folly to subject Spanish chivalry to the gauge of such grovelling, mercantile ideas.