sincerity.

The young man looked at her and answered with an ingenuous smile,

“No, indeed!”

That no provoked a tempest. The lady, forgetting that the young man was an Italian and her guest, broke out into such a fury of invective against King Victor, the Piedmontese government, and Italy from the time the army entered Rome to the War of the Marches and Umbria that the ill-fated stranger turned as white as a sheet with her scolding. But he controlled himself and did not say a word, allowing the other Italians, who were friends of long standing, to defend the honor of their country. The discussion was continued to some length, and finally brought to a close. The lady found that she had allowed herself to be carried too far, and showed that she regretted her action; but it was very evident from her words that she, and doubtless a great many others, were convinced that the unification of Italy had been accomplished against the will of the Italian people by Piedmont, the king, the greed of power, and the hatred of religion.

The common people, however, are republican, and, as they have the reputation of being quicker of action than those who talk more, they are feared.

In Spain, whenever they wish to circulate a report of an approaching revolution, they always begin by saying that it will break out in Barcelona, or that it is on the point of breaking out, or has broken out.

The Catalans do not wish to be thought of as on a common footing with the Spaniards of the other provinces. “We are Spaniards,” they say, “but, be it understood, of Catalonia—a people, to be brief, that labor and think; a people to whose ears the din of machinery is more pleasant than the music of the guitar. We do not envy Andalusia her romance, the praises of her poets, nor the paintings of her artists; we are content to be the most serious and industrious people of Spain.” In fact, they speak of their brothers of the South as at one time, though seldom now, the Piedmontese used to speak of the Neapolitans and the Tuscans: “Yes, they have genius, imagination, sweet speech, and amusement; but we, on the contrary, have greater force of will, greater aptitude for science, better popular education, ... and moreover, ... character....” I met a Catalonian, a gentleman distinguished for his ability and learning, who lamented that the War of Independence had too closely affiliated the different provinces of Spain, whence it resulted that the Catalonians had contracted some of the bad habits of the Southerners, while the latter had acquired none of the good qualities of the Catalans. “We have become mas ligeros de casco” (lighter of head), he said, and he would not be comforted.

A merchant of whom I asked what he thought of the Castilian character answered brusquely that in his opinion it would be a fortunate thing for Catalonia if there were no railroad between Barcelona and Madrid, because commerce with that race corrupted the character and the customs of the Catalan people. When they speak of a long-winded deputy, they say, “Oh yes, he is an Andalusian.”

They ridicule the poetic language of the Andalusians, their soft pronunciation, their childish gaiety, their vanity and effeminacy.

The Andalusians, on the contrary, speak of the Catalans much as an æsthetic young lady of literary and artistic tastes would speak of one of those domestic girls who prefer the cook-book to the romances of George Sand.

“They are a rude people,” they say, “who have a capacity only for arithmetic and mechanics; barbarians who would convert a statue of Montaigne into an olive-press, and one of Murillo’s canvases into a tarpaulin—the veritable Bœotians of Spain, insupportable with their jargon, their surliness, and their pedantic gravity.”

In reality, Catalonia is probably the province of least importance in the history of the fine arts. The only poet who was born in Barcelona—and he was not great, but only illustrious—was Juan Boscan, who flourished at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and introduced into Spanish letters the hendecasyllabic verse, the ballad, the sonnet, and all the forms of Italian lyric poetry, for which he had a passionate admiration. Whence arose this great transformation, as it afterward became, in the entire literature of a people? From the fact that Boscan took up his residence at Granada at the time when the court of Charles V. was held there, and that he there met an ambassador from the republic of Venice, Andrea Navagero, who knew the poems of Petrarch by heart, and recited them to Boscan, and said to him, “It seems to me that you too could write such verses; try it!”

Boscan tried: all the literature of Spain cried out against him. Italian poetry was not sonorous; Petrarch’s poems were insipid and effeminate; and Spain did not need to harness her Pegasus in the traces of any other land. But Boscan was unyielding. Garcilasso de la Vega, the chivalrous cavalier, his friend—he who received the glorious title of Malherbe of Spain—followed his example. The band of reformers grew little by little, until it became an army and conquered and dominated all literature. The consummation of the movement was reached in Garcilasso, but to Boscan remains the merit of giving it the first impulse, and hence to Barcelona belongs the honor of having given to Spain the genius who transformed her literature.

During the few days I remained at Barcelona I was accustomed to spend the evening in company with some young Catalans, walking on the sea-shore in the moonlight until late at night. They all knew a little Italian, and were very fond of our poetry, so from hour to hour we did nothing but repeat verses—they from Zorilla, Espronceda, and Lope de Vega; I from Foscolo, Berchet, and Manzoni—alternating in a sort of rivalry to see who could repeat the most beautiful selection.

It is a novel sensation, that of repeating the verses of one’s native poets in a foreign country.

When I saw my Spanish friends all intent on the story of the battle of Maclodio, and then little by little becoming excited, and finally so inflamed that they grasped me by the arm and exclaimed, with a Castilian accent which rendered their words doubly grateful, “Beautiful! sublime!” then I felt my blood surge through my veins; I trembled, and if it had been light I believe they would have seen me turn as white as a sheet. They repeated to me verses in the Catalan language. I use the word “language” because it has a history and a literature of its own, and was not relegated to the condition of a dialect until the political predominance was assumed by Castile, who imposed her idiom as authoritative upon the rest of the provinces. And although it is a harsh language, made up of short words, and unpleasant at first even to one who has not a delicate ear, it has none the less some conspicuous advantages, and of these the popular poets have availed themselves with admirable skill, particularly in expressing the sense by the sound. A poem which they recited, the first lines of which imitated the rumbling of a railway-train, drew from me an exclamation of wonder. But, even though one may know the Spanish language, Catalan is not intelligible without explanation. The people talk rapidly, with closed teeth, without supplementing their speech by gestures, so that it is difficult to get the sense of the simplest sentence, and it is a great thing to catch a few occasional words. However, the common people can speak Castilian when it is convenient, but they do so utterly without grace, although much better than the common people of the northern Italian provinces speak Italian. Even the cultivated classes of Catalonia are not proficient in the national