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The fame of the Spanish universities has greatly fallen from what it was in the early Middle Ages, when Salamanca ranked with Bologna, Paris, and Oxford, as one of the four great universities in Europe; when its halls were thronged with thousands of eager though needy scholars, and it was the centre whence Semitic learning and civilization spread to the rest of Europe. Even in a later day, in the sixteenth century, under the patronage of Cardinal Ximenes, the university of Alcala de Henares flashed into sudden fame as one of the great offshoots of the Renaissance, with its 7800 students, and its noble production of the first great Polyglot Bible since primitive times. In the eighteenth century, however, this learning had all but disappeared from Spain, and the education given in its universities was all but worthless. Little was effected towards any true revival or improvement until 1845, though something had been attempted before this in secondary education by the successive reforms of 1771, 1807, and especially of 1824 and 1836.

Though the above institutions are all classed as universities by the State, yet the course of instruction is by no means the same in all. At Madrid alone the whole programme of university education is followed out. This comprises the faculties of civil, canon, and administrative law, of philosophy and literature, of science, of medicine, and of pharmacy. Since 1868 theology is no longer studied in the universities, but in the seminaries, of which there is one in each diocese, under the direction of the bishop. The total number of pupils studying in these institutions is 8562. At Valladolid are two theological colleges for English, Scotch, and Irish students, established, one at the close of the sixteenth, the other by the Jesuits at the close of the eighteenth century.

Law is studied in all the Spanish universities, and medicine in all but one--Oviedo; Madrid, Barcelona, Granada, and Compostella have faculties of pharmacy, under which head a certain amount of natural science is taught; of the exact sciences there are chairs only at Madrid, Barcelona, and Salamanca; philosophy and literature are studied in Madrid, Barcelona, Granada, Salamanca, Seville, and Saragossa. In Oviedo, Santiago, Valencia, Valladolid, only the first year's or preparatory course of law is read, this consists of Latin, general literature, and universal history.

Besides these State universities, there are several institutions supported by the provincial deputations; for instance, there is a faculty of medicine in Seville supported by the province, another in Salamanca at the joint expense of the province and of the municipality. In addition to these there are technical schools for the study of special branches of industry or of administration, such as those of roads, canals, and harbours, of mines, and of forests, in Madrid and Villa Viciosa. A school of industrial engineering, and of the application of chemistry and mechanics, is working at Barcelona. There are technical schools of commerce at Madrid and at Barcelona. Schools or colleges of veterinary science are to be found in Madrid, Saragossa, Cordova, and Leon. Naval schools are established in Santa Cruz , in Palma , in Masnou , in San Sebastian, supported by the funds of the provinces; there is also one at Gijon, in the Asturias, founded by Jovellanos; two other private foundations also exist at Lequeito and Santurce in Biscay. In Madrid there is a special school of architecture, and also one of painting, sculpture, and engraving. Excellent schools of the fine arts exist in Barcelona, Cadiz, Corunna, Granada, Malaga, Oviedo, Seville, Valencia, Valladolid, Saragossa, and at Palma in the Balearic Isles; this last is remarkable for the number of its pupils and its generally flourishing condition.

In each of the forty-nine provinces of Spain are institutions of superior or secondary education. With the exception of the institutes of Cardinal Cisneros and of San Isidro at Madrid, which depend on the Government, and which hold the first and third rank as to the number of their pupils, these institutions are supported by the funds of the provinces or municipalities, but the professors are nominated by the Government; besides those in the capital of each province, there are also 11 others in various large towns in Spain. There are also 356 colleges of secondary education affiliated to the institutes, 58 of which are under religious corporations, making a total of 417 establishments of secondary education, with 2730 professors who have all taken degrees in science or literature.

The institutes give instruction to 14,872 pupils, and the colleges to almost the same number, 14,290; home or private education absorbs 4476; making a total in 1880 of 33,638; more than three times the number in 1848, and, including the episcopal seminaries, giving one pupil to every 398 inhabitants. All these pupils are admitted to the official examinations, and take their degrees equally on passing them. It is found that 13 per cent of the candidates are rejected at the examinations, 43.8 per cent. simply pass, and 43.1 gain honours of various kinds; while 9 per cent. take the degree of Bachelor from the colleges, and 37.2 proceed to take it from the universities.

The course of instruction is two-fold, general and special. The general comprises: Spanish and Latin grammar, two courses; rhetoric and poetry, geography, history of Spain, universal history, psychology, logic and ethics, arithmetic and algebra, geometry and trigonometry, physics and the elements of chemistry, natural history, physiology and hygiene, and elementary agriculture. The special courses are those of agriculture, the fine arts, manufactures and commerce.

Of public schools of primary instruction there are about 23,000 of all grades and classes, 1308 are infant schools and 1400 are for male and 100 for female adults.

The primary education of Spain, though nominally everywhere alike, is really so very varied as to defy any average description. A few of her infant schools are equal to the best of those of other countries. Where the provincial deputations or the municipalities take an interest in education the primary schools are very fair, but in other parts the education is little more than nominal, and the schoolmaster's appointment is well-nigh a sinecure both in pay and labour; and probably at the present moment, notwithstanding the great improvements of late years, two-thirds of the people can still neither read nor write.

LITERATURE AND THE ARTS.

Though one of the most interesting countries of Europe with regard to architecture, Spain can lay claim to no style peculiar to itself, or that originated wholly within the Peninsula. It contains, however, noble specimens of art and architecture of very varied epochs and character, from the work of the unknown sculptors who carved the so-called "toros" of Guisando and erected the huge dolmens and other megalithic monuments so thickly strewed over its soil, to the architects and artists of the present day. Almost all the races which have trodden the land have left monuments upon it--the Carthaginians, perhaps, the fewest. Scarcely anywhere else does the solid, practical character of Roman architecture appear more fully than in the amphitheatres, aqueducts, and especially in the bridges of Spain. The amphitheatres, temples, and walls of Murviedro , Tarragona, Toledo, Coria, Plasencia; the aqueducts of Merida, Seville, and Segovia; the bridges of Tuy over the Minho, of Zamora over the Douro, Salamanca over the Tormes, of Alcantara, Garrovillas de Alconetar, and Puente del Arzobispo over the Tagus, of Merida and Medellin over the Guadiana, of Seville, Cordova, and Ubeda over the Guadalquiver, and of Lerida over the Segre, are noble relics of Roman work. Of the period when Roman art was gradually modified under Christian influences, and the basilica was transformed into the Christian church, very few remains exist. To the Vandal and Gothic conquerors belong part of the walls of Toledo, and a few chapels and small churches in the north and north-west may belong in part to this date ; but the most peculiar artistic remains of this period are the jewellers' and goldsmiths' work, preserved in the metal crowns and treasure of Guarrazar , of a style which, though probably derived from the East through Byzantium, continued to influence Spanish goldsmiths' work down to the eleventh century.

The influence and the impress of Arabian art was not confined in Spain to mosques or to buildings consecrated to the use of Mohammedans alone. Some of the most beautiful specimens of this architecture were erected for Christians or for Jews. Arabic inscriptions used as ornaments are still to be seen on the altar of the Cathedral of Gerona, in the Shrine of San Isidore at Leon; Arabic architecture is seen in the palace of the archbishops of Toledo, in a chapel in Alcala de Henares, and in more than one synagogue of the Jews. Christian bishops used as episcopal seals rings on which were engraved the praises of Allah. Long after the conquest of the great cities of the centre and of the south, Moorish and Mudejar architects were retained in the pay of Christian monarchs to keep in repair the cathedrals and palaces, the beauty of whose architecture the Christians could appreciate but could not imitate, much less surpass. It is this fact, and the mingling of style and ideas consequent thereon, which gives its sole peculiar characteristic to Spanish art.

Meanwhile, contemporaneously with the flourishing period of Arabian art in the south, a Christian architecture, strikingly in contrast from its poverty of style and of invention, was slowly being reconstructed in the north. Of the eighth century we have the crypt of the Church of Santa Cruz, at Cangas in the Asturias, and some remains in parts of the churches of Oviedo. To the tenth century belong parts of the Church of San Pablo at Barcelona, and other Catalan churches, with here and there a chapel in the Western Pyrenees. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries the more important churches of Northern Spain were almost reproductions of those of Southern France; the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostella is almost a copy of the Church of St. Sernin at Toulouse; but the Romanesque style lingered somewhat longer in Spain than in the neighbouring country, and especially in North-eastern Spain. In the twelfth century edifices of real beauty are beginning to be built; such are the cloisters of Tarragona and the cathedrals of Lerida and of Tudela. The cathedrals of Avila and Siguenza are of more native Spanish character; while those of Toledo, Burgos, and Leon show the influence of French artists in their general plan, but with an added ornamentation derived from the richer and more florid fancy of the south. Of these perhaps Leon is the noblest and Burgos the richest example in Spain. Segovia, Salamanca, and Seville, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, are the latest of the great Gothic churches of Spain, before the rise of the Renaissance.

Nowhere had the classical revival in architecture more influence than in Spain. The almost exclusive type of church which, both in Spain and in her vast colonies, is pointed out as the Spanish church, is that either of the Renaissance or of the styles which have sprung from it. This soon became fashionable, but its semi-pagan additions frequently harmonize but ill with the deeper religious feeling of the preceding styles. Still it has many fine examples; the works of Berruguete and Herrera are well worthy of study. The Escorial, the work of the latter, is redeemed from ugliness or meanness by the noble proportions of its central chapel and pantheon. But to this semi-classical style succeeded, in the eighteenth century, the Churrigueresque, the most debased of all styles, wherein plaster took the place of sculpture, sham that of reality, and masses of gilding and an incongruous medley of meaningless ornament concealed the blunders in proportion and poverty of idea. The adoption of this style by the Jesuits procured its prevalence in many districts of Spain and of her colonies; occasionally the size of the buildings constructed gives a certain grandeur and hides the debasement of the methods.

The domestic, palatial, and castellated architecture of Spain has little peculiar beyond what has been already indicated. The royal palace at Madrid, however, is one of the most successful architectural efforts of the eighteenth century. The sculptured coats of arms on mean dwellings are perhaps the most notable distinction of Spanish houses. Traces of the influence of Moorish traditions may not unfrequently be observed. In the north, the cottages and farms of the Basques, with overhanging roofs and wooden galleries, recall in some degree those of Switzerland; in the south the iron bars or rails before the lower windows, and the lattices in the upper stories tell of insecurity and of habits of almost Oriental seclusion of women.

Though Spain cannot rival some other countries, Italy for example, in the number of her great painters; though she has founded no great technical school; yet is she worthy of greatest admiration; in one or two of her artists she has attained the very highest rank. As a religious painter, especially in expressing in form and colour the heights of mystic ecstasy, Murillo stands unrivalled. As a portrait-painter of courtly grace and distinction, Velazquez has few equals. It is not in landscape, or as interpreters of the ever-varying beauty of external nature, that Spanish painters excel, but in the delineation of the human form, and especially in the rendering of those religious emotions which lead through asceticism to ecstasy. Not the glorification of merely sensuous beauty, but the triumphs of the spirit over the flesh are the conquests which they prefer to delineate.

Spanish painters may be divided among three great provinces: the Valencian, Andalusian, and Castilian schools. Of these the Andalusian, and especially the school of Seville, has produced by far the greatest artists.

The earliest specimens of Spanish painting are of the decorative kind, and are employed in subordination to architecture, to add colour to form, and to heighten and make more evident the details of sculpture in churches or convents. Much of this phase of art, in which they stand very high, they probably learned from the Moors. From these labours in churches and convents art in Spain received a religious imprint and direction which it has never lost, and from which it is only now turning in the present generation. Goya and Fortuny are perhaps the only considerable painters of Spain in whose works religious subjects do not preponderate. Spanish art reflects in a peculiar degree the characteristic of Spanish theology. The mystic grace, the transport of love which seems almost too human and tender when fixed on the Divine, which moves us in the writings of St. Teresa, St. Juan de la Cruz, Xavier, and others, touches us no less in the pictures of Murillo. Stern and sombre, as these are lovely, are the paintings which remind us that we are in the land of the inquisition. Figures of martyrs serene in tortures, whose horrors are laid bare as by no other artists, figures of saints of primitive, mediaeval, or of later times, who have carried asceticism to excess, portraits of men who were as severe to themselves as they were pitiless to others; such are the subjects which are faithfully rendered by the pencils of Ribalta, Ribera, Zurbaran, and many others. Later on, when the old constitutional liberties of Spain had almost utterly fallen, and when the worship of the king had begun almost to rival that of the Blessed Virgin, Velazquez and others give us portraits of the royal family of Spain. The fun and wit which really existed in Spanish life, and which her novelists have depicted with such relish in innumerable novels, is but poorly represented in Spanish art by any of her great masters. Murillo's beggar-boys are almost the only pictures which answer to the "picaresque" side of Spanish literature till the advent of Goya and of Fortuny.

Space forbids our giving even an approximate catalogue of Spanish painters; we can merely single out for mention the two or three of highest rank in their respective provinces. In Valencia we have Ribalta , Juan de Joames , and the great but gloomy Ribera . To this school also belong the artists of Catalonia and of the Balearic Isles. In Castile are Navarette , Morales , Theotocopuli , and the younger Herrera . But the greatest painters are from Andalusia and from Seville. The well-known names of Herrera the Elder , Zurbaran , Murillo , Velazquez , suffice to show its pre-eminence. The eighteenth century, in art as well as in literature, was a time of utter decadence; Goya , the caricaturist, is the only artist we need mention; but, like its literature, Spanish art is now at length rising from its long sleep. Fortuny , has made himself a European reputation; though, through his early death, the pictures he has left give promise only of what his future might have been. Rosales , though less known by foreigners, is of equal, if not of greater merit; like Fortuny, he died in his early prime. Madrazo, Jimenez, Fradilla, and others, though not of more than national reputation, yet prove that art is not extinct in Spain.

It is not necessary to repeat here what has been said above on the Spanish authors who wrote during the silver age of Latin literature, or to trace again the origin of the Spanish language. It is evident that all we can do is to give a very brief sketch of Spanish literature. This literature is, perhaps, the richest in Europe in ballads and romances, and these, which make one of its chief glories, are among its earliest monuments. While the "Chanson de Roland" and other "Chansons de Gestes" were being written in Northern France in the form of continuous epic poems, Spain was celebrating her hero--the Cid--in a series of ballads. These, if united, would tell almost the whole story of his life; but each could be sung or recited alone as a separate and complete poem. This form of verse continued for many ages to be the favourite literature of the common people, and attained a development in Spain beyond that which it did in any other land. For spontaneity, for movement, for grace of expression, for sudden turns from martial ardour to the most pathetic tenderness, the Spanish ballad is unrivalled. It embraces and handles with almost equal success the most varied subjects: war and chivalry and love, patriotism, wit, amusement, and religion, have all been treated of in these romances, and the collections of each kind would fill many volumes.

But while the drama and comedy and the picaresque novel had been thus developing themselves, a whole literature of quite a different kind had sprung up into favour, flourished, and died away. This consisted of the prose books of chivalry, and of the pastoral romances both in prose and verse. They are remembered now chiefly through mention of them in the pages of the immortal work, the "Don Quixote," of Cervantes, which crushed them for ever. The most celebrated of them was the "Amadis de Gaul," written probably at the end of the fourteenth century. The imitations of it were innumerable, each more wild, extravagant, more insipid, and in worse taste than the last. Of the pastoral romances the only one we need to note is the "Diana Enamorada," of Montemayor , and perhaps the most successful after this is the "Galatea," of Cervantes himself, who could never entirely shake off the influence of the writings he delighted to satirize, and of which he was the literary executioner. The one Spanish book which has become really European, in a degree which has been attained by no other purely secular work, is the "Don Quixote" of this author . Into this extraordinary production, under the guise of the adventures of his hero, the last of the knights-errant, with his squire, Sancho Panza--a story full of mirth, incident, and humour--Cervantes has put all the wisdom which, by his observation on mankind and literature, he had collected during a singularly varied life as writer, soldier, seaman, Algerine slave, poet, and man of business. Though hardly belonging to the school of the classical Renaissance, yet we see in Cervantes a specimen of the marked and distinguishing excellence of the men at that time--the width of their sympathies; so that each more eminent man seemed to contain in himself an epitome of the experience of mankind. It is, perhaps, to this many-sidedness of his experience, and of his culture, that is owing the genial character, the pathetic humour, and the total absence of bitterness in this masterly satire. Thus Cervantes, while laughing down and extinguishing for ever the absurdities of the chivalrous and pastoral romances, yet retains his sympathy for all that was really noble, though exaggerated, in them. His "Don Quixote," though moving irrepressible laughter, will for ever remain one of the choicest representations of a brave, pure-minded, honourable gentleman, and tears of pity for him are not far distant from our smiles at his quaint insanities. Since the days of Cervantes one kind only of the chivalrous romances has really survived in literature, and that is the historical romance, of which the "Guerras Civiles de Granada" of the arch-priest Hita, mentioned above, is so good an example. Another satirist, less known than Cervantes, to whom his life bears some resemblance, Quevedo y Villegas , is even a more versatile writer. In prose and verse his writings are very numerous, but his style, learned and obscure, often laboured in the extreme, though pregnant with thought and wit, contrasts unfavourably with the clearness of Cervantes; he holds now in Spanish literature a place nearly analogous to that of Swift among British writers.

But we must hurry on. With the downfall of Granada, the discovery of America, the consolidation of the kingdoms of the Peninsula into one nation, real historical study began in Spain. Thus we have in quick succession many works of considerable merit, such as the "Annals of Aragon," by Zurita ; the "Comunidades of Castille," by Mejia ; the great "History of Spain," by the Jesuit Mariana ; Herrera's "General History of the Indies" ; the "Commentaries on Peru," by the Inca, Garcilasso de la Vega ; the monographs of Hurtado de Mendoza on the "Wars of Granada" ; the "Expedition of the Catalans," by Moncada ; the "Wars of Catalonia," by Melo ; and, in literary form superior to all these, the "Conquest of Mexico," by Solis .

Of poetry, apart from the stage and from the romances, there is not much of real value to engage our attention. The grandest verses of early Spain are undoubtedly the "Coplas" of Manrique , which have been often translated into English, and which form one of the finest elegies extant in any language. After Garcilassa de la Vega , Spanish poets fell into an unworthy imitation of the Italian; and subsequently Gongora set the example of a still more debased and stilted style, full of affected conceits and mistaken classicalism. The only tolerable epic poem which Spain has yet produced is the "Araucana" of Ercilla, which tells the story of the wars with Indians of that name in Chili, and in which the author had personally taken part.

Towards the close of the eighteenth century, however, a reaction set in against the French and so-called classical school, and the attention of Spanish writers was recalled to the masterpieces of their own earlier literature. The movement was accelerated by the course of political events, and the successes of the war of independence against the French. One of the earliest defenders of the romantic against the classical school was Bohl de Faber, a Hamburg merchant settled in Cadiz. He published in 1820-3, in his native town, selections from works of the early poets and dramatists of Spain; and his daughter, Cecilia, under the name of Fernan Caballero, has attained the highest rank among the lady novelists of Spain. The admission of Bohl de Faber into the ranks of the Spanish Academy, under Martinez de la Rosa, marks the definite triumph of the national school. At first it seemed as if the movement would produce simply a change of French for English and German models. Fiction became a stiff imitation of Sir Walter Scott. In poetry the influence of Byron reigned supreme. Espronceda has equalled his master in his cynical odes. "The Beggar," "The Executioner," "The last day of the Condemned," and "The Pirate," might almost have been penned by Byron; and "El Mundo Diablo" will long live in Spanish literature. Zorilla, born in 1817, still living, has been more successful in his dramas than Espronceda, especially in "Don Juan Tenorio," but his poems are inferior in force, though rich in colouring and in the melody of his verse. Gustavo Becquer is another poet who fed his genius with the legends of the past, but his models were Edgar Poe and Hoffmann; some of his weird fantastic tales and poems are excellent examples of their kind. Of an opposite character are the realistic novels of Fernan Caballero above mentioned . These are exquisite rose-tinted photographs of Spanish life and character taken by one who sees everything Spanish with a favourable eye. Her writings are distinguished by a delicate aristocratic grace and tenderness which she throws over all subjects which she handles, whether of high or lowly life. As an artist her plots are inferior to those of many worse novelists; her descriptions of scenery are beautiful and exact; as a delineator of individual character she fails, but as a painter of type and class she is unrivalled. Her sketches abound in humour and in gentle melancholy; a deep and true religious feeling pervades every line, but she fails in strength and passion. Thus she can be classed only in the second rank of female novelists, and does not approach the genius of Georges Sand or of George Elliot. Trueba, in the north, essays to imitate her, but he often sinks into puerility, nor are his studies marked by the conscientious regard for fact which distinguishes those of the lady writer. Pereda, who delineates the peasants of Santander, is a less prolific writer but of higher literary merit. Of living novelists we should place in the first rank Juan Valera with his powerful novels, "Pepita Jimenez," "El Doctor Faustino," and "Do?a Luz." Next to him is, perhaps, Perez Galdos, who, in the series entitled "Episodios Nacionales," rivals the national romances of Erckmann-Chatrian in French. Pedro Alarcon has a greater fund of wit and humour, and his "Sombrero de tres picos" is a most mirth-provoking tale. Fernandez y Gonzalez, in the number, if not in the quality of his works, may almost compete with the elder Alexandre Dumas, whose semi-historical style he repeats. Feliz Pizcueta, a Valencian writer, has also written many novels, whose scenes are laid in his native province. Among dramatists now living, or lately dead, we may mention Hartzenbusch , whose "Amantes de Teruel" is one of the most successful tragedies of the romantic school; Breton de los Herreros ; Gertrudis de Avellaneda, the first Spanish female dramatist, born in Cuba in 1816; Gutierrez, who, born in 1813, sought refuge, like Zorilla, in Spanish America; Lopez de Ayala; and lastly, J. Estebanez, whose best work is entitled "Un Drama Nuevo," and who reaches a high level of dramatic art. Of more extravagant style, inferior to these, and already marking a decadence, is Jos? Echegaray, a man of most versatile and opposite talents, and one of the first mathematicians of Spain, the best of whose plays is "Locura o Santidad." Of lyric poets we may mention Campoamor, an original but languid and graceful writer of minor verse, and Selgas, whose grace is seasoned with wit and satire, but whose prose is much superior to his verse. But by far the greatest of living Spanish poets, though like Tennyson he has failed comparatively on the stage, is Gaspar Nu?ez de Arce. His "Gritos del Combate," and "La Ultima Lamentacion de Lord Byron," contain some noble verses. He writes in the spirit of purest patriotism, with a stern morality, and with severe and chastened art.

But more important than in the movement of fiction and poetry has been the influence of the romantic school in history. The attention of Spaniards has been at length turned to the study of their original records, and especially to that of the early Arabic writers. The first to attempt this, but with insufficient means, was J. A. Cond? in his "Historia de la Dominacion de los Arabes en Espa?a." This has since been superseded by the exacter learning of Don Pascual Gayangos, in the "Mohammedan Dynasties of Spain," by many foreign writers, and by the labours of Fernandez y Gonzalez in "Los Mudejares de Castilla" and others. The labours of Don Modeste and Don Vicente Lafuente, the one in ecclesiastical, the other in civil history, must be mentioned with approval, and the works of Amador de los Rios, on the literature of Spain and on the history of the Jews in Spain, do honour to his country. Among other historians, we may mention F. Castro and Sales y Ferrer, whose works are the popular manuals in education. Fernandez Guerra in the ancient, and Coello in the modern, Geography of Spain, are authors of the highest class; nor must we omit the Englishman Bowles, who wrote on the Natural History of Spain in 1775. In Geology another English name, Macpherson, attains the highest rank, together with the surveyors employed on the "Comision de la Mapa Geologica" of Spain. On the history of property in Spain and Europe, are two remarkable essays by C?rdenas and de Azc?rate. In theology, on the Roman Catholic side, are the writings of Balm?s ; of Do?oso Cortes , of the present Bishop of Cordova, Ceferino Gonzalez; and, still publishing, the remarkable production of Menendez Pelayo, "Historia de los Heterodoxos in Espa?a;" while in the Protestant theology, Usoz, assisted by B. Wiffen in England and Boehmer in Germany, has rescued from oblivion the works of the Spanish reformers. In philology the Jesuit, Padre Fita y Colom?, worthily continues the traditions of Larramendi and of Hervas. Fernandez Guerra, and F. Tubino, and the Barcelona school pursue archaeological studies with success. The influence of outside European thought is every day more evident in Spain. Ardent disciples of the school of Comte, of Darwin, and of Schopenhauer, are to be found among her publicists. In political economy Figuerola, G. Rodriguez, Colmeiro, Azc?rate, and others, follow keenly the teaching of the English liberal school. Face to face in parliamentary eloquence and in politics stand C?novas del Castello and Emilio Castelar; the latter distinguished by a florid oratory which is unsurpassed in Europe, but whose style is far more effective when spoken than when read; the former, with greater learning and a more cultivated taste, would undoubtedly be known as a writer but for his devotion to political life. The periodical and daily press of Spain, though not to compare with that of England, or of the United States, is almost on a par with that of most continental countries; the scientific and literary reviews and magazines are yearly increasing both in numbers and in value.

This sketch, however brief, would be incomplete without a glance at what may be called the provincial literature of Spain. The publishers of Barcelona, especially in illustrated works, vie with those of Madrid. It is not in the Castilian tongue alone that the awakening is apparent. In Catalonia and in Valencia the study of the native idiom and of their ancient authors has been taken up with zeal, and with happiest results in history and philology. Victor Balaguer, the Catalan poet and dramatist is equal to all contemporary Spanish poets save Nu?ez de Arce. The dramas of Pablo Soler are received with an enthusiasm unknown to audiences in Madrid. Mila y Fontanals, Bofarull, and Sanp?re y Miquel are investigating with success the language, history, and archaeology of their country. A like, though necessarily a less important, movement is taking place in Andalusia, in the Basque Provinces, in the Asturias, and in Galicia; everywhere what is worth preserving in these dialects is being sought out, edited, and given to the press. The archives of Simancas are at length thrown open to the world, and guides and catalogues are being industriously prepared. Sevillian scholars are also studying the archives of the Indies, and the treasures of Hebrew and Arabian lore.

Thus, if Spain can at present boast no writer whom we can place undoubtedly and unreservedly in the very first rank, she shows an intellectual movement which, though confined at present to a comparatively small portion of her inhabitants, may, if it spread and continue, place her again in her proud position of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as one of the first of European nations, not perhaps in arms and power, but in literature, if not in science.

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