10 Don Alonso. [Juny, 
interminable relations of the Peninsular war. We shall not, therefore, 
even advert to the battles and sieges which accompanied that desperate 
struggle for usurpation on the one hand, and existence on the other. 
Neither can we advert to the plot of this novel: plot, indeed, it cannot 
be said to possess. The incidents are so closely interwoven with the 
political events, as to be inseparable from them. Besides, they are neither 
natural nor connected. The characters, too, are so numerous, that the 
interest is continually divided and weakened ; and they have little origi- 
mality. Some of them are manifest imitations of Scott. It is solely as 
a picture of modern Spanish manners, that we think the book worth 
consulting. The author was himself in Spain, and he has imparted to 
many of his descriptions a life and an animation, which could come from 
no other than an actual observer. Of these, we proceed to extract two 
or three, which we know to be substantially correct. In wandering 
among the Pyrenees,— 
“ You sometimes encounter a Basque maiden, with large black eyes, and 
slender form, who sings as she moves along. With naked feet, and her head 
bearing a burden which not even the men of our cities could carry, she flies 
through the precipitous paths, and, in her rapid course, she knits the many- 
coloured garment destined for her aged father. Sometimes you see a man 
seated on the enormous bales which cover the mule that carries them. With 
an immensely-brimmed hat on his head, and a brown cloak over his shoulders, 
he is proudly smoking his Havanna cigar. You are struck by the expression 
and nobleness of his countenance: his eye is motionless. To see his hand 
leaning on a blunderbuss, you would take him for a warrior meditating heroic 
deeds: to see his guitar hanging at his side, you would think him a poet 
absorbed by the inspiration of the muse ;—he is only an arriero.* He is fol- 
lowed by twenty mules, heavily laden, all of which keep pace to the ‘ drowsy 
tinkling’ of a bell, borne by the last in the line. France is approaching that 
period of improvement when commerce abandons highways for canals: Spain 
is not yet arrived at the simple cart; she is waiting until a government shall 
arise to give her public roads and bridges. More fierce closely follows the 
smuggler of the Basque provinces. To protect him in his occupation—the 
only industrious one, in the most fertile of countries—he carries a shini 
musket.- The wool of Arragon and the two Castiles, which he is conveying t 
our tewns, he will soon return with across the frontier, after it has been con- 
verted into rich stuffs in the French looms.”’—*« A bridge, half-broken dow: 
appears: your horse passes boldly over the tottering arch—more boldly, per- 
haps, than yourself. But if your heart beats strongly, it isnot from fear: you 
have crossed the chasm, and you look behind you with something like trepi- — 
dation. You see a little stone cross, which time has covered with moss and ~ 
ivy—the only solid thing on this tumble-down bridge. Why this emotion at _ 
the sight of a despicable stone cross? This is the boundary between the 
Catholic and Most Christian Kingdoms. The modest monument tells you, — 
that the soil you now tread is not that of France.” oe 
We now approach the first Spanish village, situated at the foot of a 
deep ravine—the first, we mean, which the traveller meets with, when, 
instead of entering Navarre by Yzun and the Guipuzcoa, he takes th 
road to Pampeluna, through the French villages of Ainhoa and 
Ustaritz -— 
“Urdax does not contain fifty cottages: it is overlooked by a convent, 
which ornaments the place, and imparts animation to the country. Not far 
~ 
* A muleteer. 
