240 EccoUections of Scenes and Cities. |[Skpt. 



fan-like palm ; the odour of myrtle hedges, and of geranium thickets, 

 one blow of crimson and lilac blossoms ; Moorish gardens and fountains, 

 and oriental usages. These are some of the images that eke out our 

 recollections of Spain. 



It will be observed that these images belong chiefly to the pic- 

 turesque. There is little in Spain of what is called beauty of natural 

 scenery. Our recollections are pleasing, vivid, and most interesting ; 

 but not from the general beauty of the pictures which they recal to the 

 mind, but from their novelty chiefly, and in some degree from their 

 individual beauty. Wide prospects of verdant meadows, hill and dale, 

 deep foliage, glittering streams and embowered cottages, are no where 

 to be seen in Spain — these must be sought for in England, Switzerland, 

 and in p^rts of Germany. The beauty of a Spanish landscape is not in 

 the whole, but in its parts ; there is no grouping of beauty ; the images, 

 often exquisitely beautiful in themselves, stand single ; so that when we 

 think of Spanish scenery, it is not of the magnificent prospect enjoyed 

 from this or that height, but of the single images that belong to the 

 dominion of natural beauty. An orange grove is doubtless beautiful, 

 but it is not beauty in the mass ; its perfect greenness, and the bright 

 and many-tinted fruit peeping beneath the foliage, render it an object 

 of great beauty ; but it requires that one be near it, for it wants the 

 breadth and- majesty of a forest. Clumps of palms, with their broad 

 canopy, giant stem, and golden clusters of fruit, are as graceful as they 

 are novel to the eye of the traveller, but still they do not group with 

 the other features of a landscape, and excepting in the neighbourhood 

 of Elche, " the city of dates," palms are seldom seen in greater num- 

 bers than two or three hundred in one spot. And as for the thousand 

 aromatic, flowering and beautiful shrubs, as well as the minuter flowers 

 which thickly carpet the sierras of Andalusia and Grenada — the rose- 

 mary, the sweet marjoi-am, the balm of Gilead, the gumcistus, the 

 oleander, and the infinity of heaths — these, beautiful as to waken 

 " thoughts that lie too deep for tears," yet add nothing to the general 

 effect of a landscape. The view-hunter will be most pleased with Bis- 

 cay. The mention of Biscay brings to my recollection a scene that 

 never imtil this moment has chanced to recur to my memory. 



One of the few Spanish bathing-places is Portagaletx, a very small 

 village, at the mouth of the river, the name of which I forget, that forms 

 the Port of Bilbao. It is a common thing to make a day's excursion 

 from Bilbao to Portagaletz, and when the tide answers boats go down 

 with the ebb, and return in the evening with the flowing tide. I de- 

 voted one day to this amusement, and have much reason to remember 

 the novelty of the scdne which I witnessed. The boat dropped gently 

 down the river, between the lofty Biscayan hills, and we reached Porta- 

 galetz and the Fonda (hotel) de los Tres Reyes, about ten o'clock. Here 

 a substantial breakfast, in the Spanish style, was laid out, and the party 

 that sat down to it consisted of two very ill-favoured Castilian ladies, 

 of a certain age ; the wife and daughter of a Bilbao citizen, the latter, 

 a well-grown, coarse-featured^ but rather comely Biscayan ; a Jew and 

 his Jew daughter, Iraelite all over, young and interesting ; two cabal- 

 leros, from what part of Spain I cannot tell ; two very pretty French 

 demoiselles, Ires gentils, and one of them, as the French would say, jolie 

 comme un angej a Carmelite friar, his Swedish Majesty's, consul, and — 

 myself. Breakfast went off tolerably well, though the soup, which had 



