which must be attributed to the influence of evil governors, worse counsellors, and a crafty and bigoted priesthood. natural causes can be assigned for such a decline, | yellow-jacketed soldiers, and those pretty Catalan women, whose eyes, according to M. de Balzac, are composed of velvet and fire, and who paced to and fro, shrouded in the elegant mantilla, and going through the various divisions of the fan-exercise. The theatre in the evening, and a visit to the strong fortress of Monjuich, consumed the short stay the travellers were allowed to make in Barcelona, and they returned on board the steamer, which sailed for Valencia. They had got as far as Tarragona, when the engines suddenly stopped. All attempts to set them going were in vain; they were completely out of order, and the unlucky Primer Gaditano lay tossing at the mercy of the waves, in imminent danger of going ashore, until an English ship hove in sight and towed her back to Barcelona. Here the Baron and his companions, heartily sick of Spanish steamers and captains, finally abandoned their Madeiran project, and Although the weather was fine, and wind favorable, most of the passengers by the Primer Gaditano were grievously sick. Two Spanish prebendaries especially distinguished themselves by extremity of suffering, and at one of them the Baron, albeit an excellent seaman, feared to look, lest he should vomit for sympathy. The unfortunate clerigo had tucked the corner of a napkin under his huge black shovel-hat, and the cloth hung down over his shoulder and breast, contrasting with the cadaverous yellow of his complexion. He was the very incarnation of sea-sickness. At night, although the weather was cool, the berths were hot, and most of the passengers lay upon sofas in the cabin, where, when the wind rose, the state of affairs was neither confortable nor savoury. The Span-resolved to cross the Pyrenees and winter at iards would fain have smoked, but, fortunately for their companions, the prohibition affixed to the cabin-wall was rigidly enforced by the captain. The dinner was hardly of a nature to soothe squeamish stomachs. It was cooked Spanish fashion, with a liberal allowance of rancid oil and garlic-flavored sausage. At last, on the evening of the second day, the steamer ran into the harbour of Barcelona. It was only halfpast six o'clock, but the lazy quarantine and custom-house officials deemed it too late to perform their duty; and not till the next morning were the Baron and his friends allowed to land and take their quarters in the Locanda de las Cuatro Naciones, which a Spanish colonel had assured them, with more patriotism than veracity, was equal to the first Parisian hotels. Although the best in Barcelona, it by no means justified such a comparison, but still it was excellent when contrasted with the majority of Spanish inns; and, moreover, it looked out upon the Rambla, a magnificent promenade, answering to the Boulevards of Paris and the Linden of Berlin. The edibles, too, were capital; the game and poultry and roasted pig's feet delicious, the dates fresh, the American preserves of exquisite flavor, the red Catalan wines objectionable only from their strength. And all these good things were supplied in an abundance astonishing to men accustomed to the scanty delicacies and makebelieve desserts of most German table-d'hôtes, where dainties appear only when the guests have properly gorged themselves with bouilli and gherkins. Such sumptuous fare consoled the invalid Baron in some measure for insufficiency of furniture and absence of bed-curtains; and after dinner he strolled out upon the Rambla, which he found thronged with cloaked Dons, Pau. Notwithstanding the many alarming reports of ferocious highwaymen and recent robberies - reports of which every traveller in Spain is sure to hear an abundance - the German consul assured them they might proceed with perfect safety by the route of Gerona and Figueras. The diligences on that road had not been attacked for a whole year, and a terrible brigand, guilty of one hundred and seventeen murders, and known by the nickname of Pardon, because he never pardoned or spared any one who fell into his hands, had recently been captured. Having received a dangerous wound, he had betaken himself, with vast assurance, and under an assumed name, to a public hospital, and whilst there, an accomplice betrayed him. Baron Vaerst gives some curious statistical details concerning the number of murders annually occurring in Spain, with a list of the most remarkable persons slain in cold blood since the commencement of the civil war, and various particulars of the different styles of thieving practised in Spain. Some of his notions concerning the addictions and habits of highwaymen are rather poetical than practical. "It is strange," he says, "but not the less a fact, that brigands always abound most in beautiful countries. They require a bright sky, romantic cliffs, picturesque valleys, smiling plains, umbrageous palm-trees, and fragrant orange groves, and an olive-cheeked mistress, fanciful and fascinating, with raven-locks, and brightglancing eyes. Thus we find them most numerous in the fair regions of Italy: and in that Spanish land so richly endowed by nature, that after all its wars and revolutions it still shows more signs of wealth than of desolation. Frederick the Great is said to have once asked which was the richest country in the world. Some | ler give them wine from his bota. It was very guessed Peru, others Chili, but he replied that bad. "You are a miser," cried Navarro, angrily, Spain was the richest, since its rulers had for "and do not deserve your riches. With treasthree centuries done their utmost to ruin it, and ures of gold and silver in your coffers, you drink had not yet succeeded." It might have occurred wretched country wine, like the meanest peasto the worthy Baron, and we wonder it did not, ant!" "Alas! noble sir,” replied the man of that the very wars and revolutions he speaks of, metal, "I am very poor, and live hardly and added to gross misgovernment and absurd pro- sparingly; I have eight children, no money, but hibitory tariffs (affording encouragement to the some credit, and nothing of what you found on smuggler, who is the father of the highwayman,) me belongs to me." Sergeant," cried Navarro, have much more to do with the multiplication" a glass of our best Malaga to the gentleman." of robberies, than the picturesque scenery and The order was obeyed, and whilst his men finorange trees; more even than gazelle-eyed she-ished the bottle, the captain again addressed the banditti, his idea of whom is evidently derived from the green-room of the Breslau theatre. From an old campaigner, who served under Marshal VORWAERTS, came up at La Belle Alliance to decide the fight, and has since rolled about the world in various capacities and occupations likely to quench romance, such fanciful notions were hardly to be expected. But the Baron takes a strong interest in the predatory portion of Spain's population, and has collected amusing stories of notable outlaws, amongst others of the celebrated NAVARRO, whose memory still lives amongst the people, perpetuated by hundreds of popular songs, and by numerous sainetes played at half the theatres in Spain. He was quite the gentleman, possessed considerable talents and some education, despised the vulgar luxury and ostentation of his subordinates, and rode the best horses in Andalusia. He would walk at noon-day into the countryhouse of some rich proprietor, order the poultryyard to be stripped to supply dinner for his followers, and the fattest fowl of the flock to be stuffed for himself, not with truffles, but with gold quadruples. If he found the stuffing not sufficiently rich, he demanded a second bird, and left the house only when his appetite was fully satisfied, and his pocket well filled. He once stopped a jeweller on his way from a fair, took from him a sum of four thousand francs, and then inquired if he had no jewels about him. The man at once admitted that he had, and that he had sewn them into his clothes, not, however, to preserve them from gallant cavaliers of the road, but from the vile rateros an inferior class of thieves, operating on a small scale, who prowl in quest of isolated and defenceless travellers. He produced his treasure, and then, without waiting orders, took from off his mules a richly wrought silver service, at which Navarro was greatly pleased, and swore that in future he and his soldiers (he assumed at all times the style of a military chief) would in future dine off the elegant workmanship of the Castilian Cellini. Finally, having stripped him of every thing else, the robbers made the unlucky jewel goldsmith. "See here," he said, showing him a list of the concealed jewels, "my last courier brought me this. Had you kept back a single stone, it would have fared ill with you. But I take nothing from honest men and skilful artists. Pack up your things, take this pass, give your wife and children a kiss for Navarro, and if you are robbed upon the road, come and tell me." Without wishing to calumniate the philanthropical M. Navarro in particular, or his fraternity in general, we will remark, that such stories as these may be picked up by the score in Spain, by any one curious of their collection. As, in Italy, industrious rogues, with aid of file and verdigris, manufacture modern antiques for the benefit of English greenhorns, so, in Spain, a regular fabrication of robber-tales takes place; the same, when properly constructed and polished, being put into speedy circulation in diligences and coffee-houses, on the public promenades, and at the table-d'hôtes, for the delectation of foreign ramblers, and especially of the French, who gulp down the most astounding narratives with a facility of swallow beautiful to contemplate. For the Frenchman, cynic and unbeliever though he be, entertains extravagant ideas on the subject of Spain. It is rare that he has been in the country, unless his residence be within a very few leagues of its frontier, and he pictures to himself an infinity of perils and horrors, to be found neither in Spain nor anywhere else, save in his imagination. "Since the war of Independence," says Baron Vaerst, "the French nourish strong prejudices against the Spaniards; and old soldiers, especially, who fought in that war, are apt to consider a large majority of the nation as habitual murderers and poisoners. For certainly at that time, murder and poison were proclaimed from every pulpit as means approved by Heaven for the extermination of the arch-foe. The exiled Spaniards whom one finds scattered over France, especially over its southern provinces, are more apt to confirm than to contradict such stories. Discontented with their own country, they represent its condition as worse even than it really is, and, naïvely expresses it, to cut his tobacco. He leaves him also his cigarette, and often as much cash as will procure a night's lodging. If, favored by fortune, he rises to be leader of a band of smugglers, he comes to a friendly understanding with the authorities, and agrees to pay a price usually, it is said, a quadruple or sixteen dollars - for the unimpeded passage of each laden mule. For this premium the contraband goods are often escorted to their destination by soldiers. When the smuggler is unsuccessful, and finds himself with nothing but his tromblon and knife, he turns robber, the ultimate resource of this original class of men." There is here some exaggeration, especially as regards the military escort of the smuggled lace and cottons ; but there is also much truth in this broadly pencilled sketch of how they manage matters in the Peninsula. On his way from Barcelona, Baron Vaerst met his brother-baron, De Meer, then captaingeneral of Catalonia, who swayed the province with an iron rule, that made him alike dreaded and detested. Such severity was necessary, for the Catalans are a troublesome and mutinous race, and Barcelona especially is the head-quarters of sedition and discontent. Baron de Meer had a strong garrison at his orders, the city lies under the guns of Monjuich, and the breadth of the long handsome streets and open squares facilitate the suppression of insurrection. Never like most unfortunate persons, add blacker | the long knife, without which the Spaniard shades to what is already black enough." In rarely travels, and which is necessary, as he Spain, the land of idlers, not a town but has its gossip-market, an imitation more or less humble of that celebrated Gate of the Sun, where the newsmongers of the Spanish capital daily meet to repeat and improve the latest lie, much to their own pastime, and greatly to the consolation and advantage of the credulous correspondents of leading London journals. In provincial towns, whither palace-chronicles and metropolitan gossip come but in an abridged form, the report of a diligence stopped or a horseman fired at affords an agreeable variety, and is eagerly caught, magnified, and multiplied by the old women in cloaks and breeches, who hold their morning and evening confabulations in the sunshine of the Alameda, or beneath the plaza's snug arcades. Of course, the itinerant gavacho, the Parisian tourist on the lookout for the picaresque and picturesque wherewith to swell future feuilletons, gets the full benefit of such reports, expanded and embellished into romantic feats and instances of generosity, worthy of a Chafandin or a José Maria. The tourist, in his turn, superadds a coat of varnish to give glitter to the painting, which is subsequently retailed in daily shreds to the thirty thousand abonnés of the Presse or Débats. In his capacity of an old soldier, who has run real dangers, and despises the terrors (mostly imaginary) of gaping blunderbusses and double-edged knives, Baron Vaerst does not condescend to make himself the hero of an encounter or escape, although his last jour-theless, it had been thought advisable to fortify ney in the Peninsula led him through districts and garrison several of the large buildings, and, of evil repute and small security. In Arragon, in spite of the opposition of the magistrates and where there had been no political disturbances inhabitants, to break through various streets, so for some short time before his visit, "the roads as to form long avenues, that might be swept in were so much the more dangerous, and could be case of need by artillery. These extreme measconsidered safe only for muleteers, who have ures were imperatively called for by the numergenerally a pretty good understanding with the ous outbreaks in Catalonia, a province which knights of the highway. I met several thousand gives more trouble to the government than all mules going from France to Huesca, where a the rest of Spain. Barcelona has had a bad great cattle fair was held; this made the road reputation for some hundred years past. It is lively. Muleteers, suspicious-visaged gentry, a resort of Italian carbonari, German republimany of them doubtless smugglers or robbers, cans, and discontented restless spirits from variwere there in numbers. The country people ous countries; also the headquarters of sundry fear the robbers too much to betray or prosecute revolutionary committees, and of the secret socithem; the authorities are feeble and inefficient; ety known as the Vengeurs d'Alibaud, to which the rich proprietors pay black mail as protection that helpless and imbecile Bourbon, Don Franagainst serious damage. And if robbers are cisco de Paula, was said, a short since, to be captured, they at once become objects of gener- affiliated. Alibaud himself lived in Barcelona, al sympathy. There are places where the jailor and only left it to go to Paris, and make his lets them out for a few days on parole, and sends attempt on the life of the king of the French. them to work unguarded in town or country, dis- In one month (January, 1845) sixty-two pertinguished only by an iron ring upon the ankle. sons died a violent death in Barcelona, of whom The fifty-one were murdered and five executed, whilst six committed suicide. As regards popular commotions and revolts, so frequent of late true gentleman-highwayman, however, keeps his word of honor, even as he is gallant to the fair sex he leaves the plundered traveller years, Baron Vaerst, who has difficulty in admitting that any thing can go on well under a "socalled liberal system," maintains that the Barcelonese have strong cause and excuse for rebellion in the injury done to their manufactures by the close alliance between Spain and England. He apparently imagines the Spanish tariff to be highly favorable to English fabrics, and sighs over the misfortunes of the hardly-used manufacturers, whose smoking chimneys he complacently contemplated from the lofty battlements of Monjuich. In short, he indulges in a good deal of argument and assertion, which sound well, but, being based on false premises, are worth exactly nothing. When he talks of the Catalonian manufactures as important and flourishing, he is evidently ignorant that they are chiefly supplied with foreign goods, smuggled in and stamped with the mark of the Barcelona factories! This fact is notorious and susceptible of easy proof. The amount of raw cotton imported into Spain would make, as the returns show, but a very small part of the goods issued from Spanish manufactories. Were the contraband system exchanged for legitimate commerce, at moderate duties, a few cotton-spinners, alias smugglers, might suffer in pocket, but the increased trade of Catalonia would employ far more hands than would be thrown out of work by putting down a few badly managed spinningjennies. The bigoted and brutal Catalan populace, beyond comparison the worst race in the Peninsula, cannot comprehend this fact; and the cunning few who do comprehend it find it their interest in suppressing the truth. The French, too, who well know that, in a fair market, English cottons would beat theirs out of the field, take care, by means of such emissaries as Mr. Lesseps, to keep up the cheat. So, when ever there is a talk of reducing the present absurd tariff of Spain, the Barcelonese fly to arms, throw up barricades, bluster about English influence, and, whilst thinking to defend their own interests, serve as blind instruments to a disreputable foreign potentate. The Spaniards are a very jealous and a very suspicious people, and have been ill-treated and imposed upon till they have acquired the habit of seeking selfish motives for the actions of all men. Such over-wariness defeats its object. A section - by no means a majority-of the Spanish nation look upon England as having only her own interests in view when she seeks a commercial treaty with Spain, arranged on fair and reasonable bases. Nothing can be more erroneous and delusive. England would gain very little by such a treaty; the great advantage would be derived by Spain, who now receives duty on one eighth of the British goods annually imported. We need not say how the other seven eighths enter. Spain has seven hundred and ten leagues of coast and frontier. Gibraltar and Portugal are convenient depôts, and there are one hundred and twenty thousand professional smugglers in Spain, the flower of the population, fine, active, stalwart fellows, imbued with hearty contempt for revenue officers, and whom we would back, after a month's organization, against the entire Spanish army, now amounting, we believe, under the benign system of Christina, Narvaez, and Company, to something like a hundred and eighty thousand men. In short, it is notorious that Spain is inundated with English and French goods. "In this state of things," says an able and enlightened writer, "I put the following dilemma to Spanish manufacturers: -Your manufactures are either prosperous, or the contrary. In the former case, conceding that the contraband trade knows no other limits to its criminal traffic than those of the possible consumption, the competition from which you suffer is as great as it can be. What does it signify to you, then, whether the goods enter through the customhouse, on payment of a protective duty, or are introduced by smugglers, at a certain rate of commission? And if your manufactures are not prosperous, what need you care whether foreign goods enter by the legal road or the illicit trade?" It were impossible to state the case more clearly and conclusively, The smugglers charged fixed per-centages, according to the nature of the goods and the place they are to be conveyed to. These rates are as easily ascertained as a premium at Lloyd's or the price of rentes on the Paris Bourse. Let the duties on foreign manufactures be regulated by them, and smuggling, one of the prominent causes of the demoralization and misery of Spain, is at once knocked upon the head. At the same cost, or even at a slight advance, every importer will prefer having his goods through the legitimate channel, instead of receiving them crushed into small packages, and often more or less damaged by their clandestine transit. And the money now paid to the smuggling insurers would flow, under the new order of things, into the Spanish treasury, a change devoutly to be desired by Spanish creditors of all classes and denominations. Between Barcelona and Gerona the Baron was much amused by the energetic proceedings of a zagal, or Spanish postillion, who jumped up and down from his seat, with the horses at full gallop, to the great peril of his neck, and sang never-ending songs in praise of Queen Christina and of the joyous life of a smuggler, only interrupting his melody to shout an oft-repeated tiro! tiro! (pull! pull !) and to swear Saracenic oaths at his steaming mules. | hat was put upon her statue, and she received "By the holy bones of Mahomet!" he would exclaim, "I will make thee dance, lazy Valeroza! (the valorous;) rebaptize thee with a cudgel, and then hang thee. Holy St. Anthony of Padua never had a lazier jackass!" "And then he ran himself breathless by the side of poor Valerosa, and screamed himself hoarse, and flogged and flattered; and the oddest thing was, that the beasts seemed to understand him, and showed fear or joy as he blamed or praised them. Each mule had a name of its own, pricked up its long ears when addressed by it, and testified, by more rapid movements, that it well knew what laziness would entail. Manuela, Luna, Justa, Generala, Valerosa, Casilda, and Pilar, the zagal loved them all, and preferred caressing to punishing them. If horses are generally bad in France, it is assuredly in great measure because no nation in the world are more unfeeling to their beasts, especially horses, than the French. A large proportion of the cart-horses are blind from cuts of the whip in the eyes; the postillions cannot harness their cattle without giving them violent kicks in the side; and one sees the poor brutes tremble at the approach of their tyrants. Abuse, oaths, and blows are the order of the day. The Arab makes much of his noble steed, and even the rude Cossack looks to his horse's comfort before providing for his own." The town of Gerona, well fortified, and possessing a strong citadel, is celebrated for its noble defence against the French, related, in interesting detail, by Toreno, in his 'History of the War of Independence.' Its brave governor, Don Mariano Alvarez, having few provisions, and a large garrison, economized the former, and was prodigal of the latter. In repeated sorties he inflicted severe loss on the besiegers. One officer, ordered on a very perilous expedition, inquired, with some anxiety, what point he was to fall back upon. "Upon the churchyard," was the consolatory reply of Alvarez. When things came to the pass that five reals were paid for a mouse, and thirty for a cat, and somebody talked of capitulating, Alvarez swore he would have the offender slaughtered and salted, and would do the same by all who hinted at surrender. After nine months' continual fighting, all provisions being exhausted, the fortress was given up. The garrison had dwindled from fifteen thousand to four thousand men, and only a small portion of these were capable of bearing arms. The protracted and glorious defence was to be attributed-so some of the Spaniards thought to the especial protection of the holy St. Narcissa. That respectable lady is the patroness of Gerona, where her ashes repose; during the siege, a cocked and feathered the title of generalissima. Figueras, the last town of any note before reaching the French frontier, is also a fortified place. Taken by the French in the Peninsular war, it was recaptured by the Spaniards, who entered in the night through a subterranean passage. Its citadel of San Fernando is one of the strongest in Spain, and can accommodate fifteen thousand men. The town itself is insignificant, and only celebrated for the scale and solidity of its fortifications, which remain as a monument of former Spanish grandeur. But they lack completion, and are ill situated, which caused some connoisseur in the art to say that the mason should have been decorated, and the engineer flogged. Pau, the favorite resort of English sojourners in southern France, was selected by the Baron and his companions for their winter-quarters; and although, upon their arrival there, the severe cold and heavy snow induced them to doubt the truth of the praises they had heard of its mild and beautiful climate, they soon became convinced the encomium was well merited. The meadows remained green the whole winter through, and once only, in the month of March, came a fall of snow, which disappeared, however, in forty-eight hours. From their windows they commanded a magnificent view southwards; bounded in the distance by the lofty summits of the Pyrenees, supreme amongst which rises the snow-covered dome of the Pic du Midi,—“a magnificent amphitheatre, whose aspect is most sublime at night, in the full moon-light. Morning and evening, at the rising and setting of the sun, the snowy points of the Pic resemble great spires of flame, blazing through the gloom. With incredible suddenness darkness covers the low lands, whilst the tall peaks, clothed in ice, still remain illuminated, gleaming far and wide above the broad panorama of mountains, like isolated lighthouses on the shores of the mighty ocean." Many of the Pyrenean mountains are known as the Pic du Midi; there is a Pic du Midi d' Ossau, another of Bigorre, a third of Valentine, &c.; but the Pic du Midi de Pau is the highest, and rises fifteen hundred and thirtyone toises (nearly ten thousand English feet) above the level of the sea. In like manner many rivers bear the name of Gave, a Celtic word, equivalent to mountain stream; but the Gave de Pau is the greatest and most celebrated of the family. The Pic du Midi, from certain peculiarities of position, was long thought the highest of the Pyrenees, till it was ascertained that the Monperdu, the Vignemale, and the Maladetta, are in certain parts more than a thousand feet higher. Concerning the English residents at Pau, M. |