the inhabitants were destroyed in a tumult, when he escaped, together with Persiles and Sigismonda.

In this episode we recognize the pen of the author of Don Quixote. The insignificance of the hero and the greatness of the incident are here as pleasantly contrasted as in Don Quixote are the valour of the hero and the petty nature of the incidents. This humorous spirit, however, and this ironical style of treating his own story, only manifest themselves occasionally in this work, which in its serious marvellousness is often fatiguing.

It has appeared to me that we may perceive in the works of Cervantes, the progress which superstition was making under the imbecile sovereigns of Spain, and the influence which it was acquiring over the mind of an old man surrounded by priests, whose object it was to render him as intolerable and as cruel as themselves. In his novel of Rinconete and Cortadillo, Cervantes makes a skilful and delicate attack upon the superstitions of his country, and a similar spirit is observable in his Don Quixote. The episode of Ricoto the Moor, the countryman of Sancho Panza, who relates the sufferings of the Moors, for the most part Christians, on their banishment from Spain, is highly touching. "The punishment of exile," says he, "which some esteem light and humane, is to us the most terrible of all. Wherever we roam we lament Spain, for there were we born, and that is our native country. Nowhere have we found the asylum which our misfortunes merited. In Barbary and in every part of Africa, where we had hoped to meet with a friendly reception, an asylum, and kind treatment, we have been more injured and more outraged than elsewhere. We knew not the benefits which we possessed until we lost them. The desire which we almost all of us feel to return into Spain is so great, that the greater part amongst us, who like me understand the language, and they are not few, have returned into this country, leaving their wives and children without support. It is now only that we feel by experience how sweet is that love of our country, which we formerly used to hear spoken of." With whatever reserve the established authorities are alluded to in this story, and in the equally affecting story of his daughter Ricota, it is impossible that it should not excite a deep interest for so many unfortu

nate wretches, who aggrieved in their religion, oppressed by the laws, no less than by individual tyranny, had been driven with their wives and their children, to the number of six hundred thousand, from a country where they had been established for more than eight centuries; a country which owed to them its agriculture, its commerce, its prosperity, and no inconsiderable part of its literature.

In Persiles and Sigismonda there is a Moorish adventure, the time of which is laid near the period of their expulsion from Spain. But in this place Cervantes endeavours to render the Musulmans odious, and justify the cruel law which had been put in execution against them. The heroes of the romance arrive with a caravan at a Moorish village in the kingdom of Valencia, situated a league distant from the sea. The Moors hasten to welcome them; offering their houses, and displaying the most obliging hospitality. The travellers at length yield to these entreaties, and take up their lodging with the richest Moor in the village. Scarcely, however, had they retired to repose, when the daughter of their host secretly apprizes them, that they had been thus pressingly invited in order that they might be entrapped on board a Barbary fleet, which would arrive in the night for the purpose of transporting the inhabitants of the village and all their riches to the shores of Africa, and that their host hoped by making them prisoners to procure a large ransom. The travellers, in consequence of this intelligence, took refuge in the church, where they fortified themselves; and in the night the inhabitants of the village having burned their dwellings, set sail for Africa. Cervantes on this occasion speaks in the person of a christian Moor: Happy youth! prudent king! go on, and execute this generous decree of banishment; fear not that the country will be deserted and uninhabited. Hesitate not to exile even those who have received baptism. Considerations like these ought not to impede your progress, for experience has shown how vain they are. In a little while the land will be repeopled with new Christians, but of the ancient race. will recover its fertility, and attain a higher prosperity than it now possesses. If the lord should not have vassels so numerous and so humble, yet those who remain will be faithful Catholics. With them the roads will be secure, peace

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will reign, and our property will be no longer exposed to the attacks of these robbers."

This work leads us to hazard another remark on the character of the Spanish nation. The hero and heroine are represented as patterns of perfection. They are young, beautiful, brave, generous, tender, and devoted to one another beyond any thing which human nature can be supposed to attain, yet with all these rare qualities they are addicted to falsehood, as though they had no other occupation. Upon every occasion, and before they can possibly know whether the falsehood will be useful or prejudicial to them, they make it an invariable rule to speak directly contrary to the truth. If any one asks them a question, they deceive him. If any one confides in them, they deceive him. If any one asks their advice, they deceive him; and those who are most attached to them, are most surely the objects of this spirit of dissimulation. Arnaldo of Denmark, a noble and generous prince, is from the beginning to the end of the romance the victim of Sigismonda's duplicity. Sinforosa, is no less cruelly deceived by Persiles. Policarpo, who had shown them great hospitality, loses his kingdom by the operation of their artifices. Every falsehood, however, proving successful, the personal interest of the hero is supposed to justify the measure, and what would to our eyes appear an act of base dissimulation, is represented by Cervantes as an effort of happy prudence. I am aware that foreigners who have travelled in Spain, and merchants who have traded with the Castilians, unanimously praise their good faith and honesty. Such authorities must be believed. Nothing is more common than to calumniate a people who are separated from us by their language and their manners; and those virtues must indeed be real which can triumph over all our national prejudices. The literature of Spain, at all events, does not strengthen our confidence in the good faith of the Castilians; not only is dissimulation crowned with success in their comedies, their romances, and their descriptions of national manners, but that quality absolutely receives greater honour than candour. In the writers of the northern nations we discover an air of sincerity and frankness, and an openness of heart, which we may look for in vain amongst the Spanish authors. Their history bears a stronger testimony

even than their literature to the truth of this accusation, which hangs over all the people of the South, and induces a suspicion of want of faith, which their sense of honour, their religion, and the system of morality which is current amongst them, would seem to justify. No history is soiled by more instances of perfidy than that of Spain. No government has ever made so light of its oaths and its most sacred engagements. From the reign of Ferdinand the Catholic, to the time of the administration of Cardinal Alberoni, every war, every public treaty, every relation between the government and the people, is marked by the most odious treachery. Their address, however, gained the admiration of the world, and they contrived to separate truth from honour.

There is now only one work of Cervantes which remains to be noticed, the Galatea, his earliest composition, which was published in 1584, in imitation of the Diana of Montemayor. After Don Quixote, this production is most generally known to foreigners. The translation, or rather the imitation of it by Florian has rendered it popular in France. The Italians had already shewn a great taste for pastoral poetry; they did not, like the ancients, content themselves with writing eclogues, in which a single sentiment was developed in a dialogue between a few shepherds, without action, plot, or catastrophe. To the sweetness, the spirit, and the elegance which belong to pastoral productions, the Italians added romantic situations and powerful passions. They had composed several pastoral dramas, some of which have been presented to the notice of the reader in the earlier part of this work. The Spaniards had been still more deeply captivated by these pastoral fancies, which, by recalling to the mind the feelings of our childhood, accord admirably with the yielding indolence of southern feelings. Their drama in its origin was entirely pastoral. Incited by the same taste, they produced many long works, which were, in fact, nothing more than tedious eclogues. The six books of the Galatea form two octavo volumes, and yet these constituted only the first portion of the work, which was never finished. Florian soon perceived that a tale of this length would not be agreeable to the taste of his countrymen ; and he therefore worked up the incidents while he abridged the romance, and while he retrenched the poetical portions, added to the general interest.

Cervantes has been blamed for having mingled too many episodes with the principal tale. It is said, that he has attempted too many complicated histories, and introduced too many characters, and that he has, by the quantity of incidents and names, confounded the imagination of the reader, who is unable to follow him. He is also blamed for having, in the earliest of his works, when he was yet comparatively ignorant of what constitutes purity and elegance of style, employed an involved construction which gives his work an appearance of affectation. I should be also inclined to impute it to him as a fault, though this accusation more properly falls upon the class than upon this individual work, that he is almost cloying in the sweetness and languor of his love-scenes. When we read these pastoral romances, we may imagine ourselves bathing in milk and honey. Notwithstanding these observations, the purity of its morals, the interest of its situations, the richness of invention, and the poetical charms which it displays, must ensure to the Galatea an honourable place in the list of Spanish classics.

Amongst the contemporaries of Cervantes there is one whose name is frequently repeated, and whose work has preserved considerable celebrity without being ever read. Don Alonzo de Ercilla was the author of the Araucana; a poem which has been sometimes cited as the only Spanish epic. This idea, however, is by no means well grounded; for there is not, perhaps, any nation which has more frequently attempted the epic style than the Spanish: indeed, the Castilians reckon thirty-six epic poems. It is true that none of these rise above mediocrity, or are worthy of being compared with the admirable productions of Camoëns, or Tasso, or Milton. Ercilla, however, has no greater pretensions than the rest, for we find nothing in his writings which can raise him absolutely above the ranks of his rivals. The Araucana would, in all probability, have been forgotten, together with the thirty-six pretended epics, if Voltaire had not chanced to bestow upon it some fresh celebrity. On the publication of his Henriade he subjoined an Essay on Epic Poetry, in which he reviewed the various poems which different nations had presented to lispute the epic palm. The Spaniards had nothin bet than the Araucana, of which Cervantes had said, in inventory of the library of Don Quixote, that it