CHARACTERS. 



801 



The Catalan lias a national pride 

 peculiar to him : he sees nothing 

 above himself. He looks down on 

 other Spaniards, he even despises a 

 part of the nation, and his hatred 

 of the Castilian is beyond all ex- 

 pression. He does not love stran- 

 gers ; the French, with whom he 

 has most occasion to communicate, 

 he -hates the most; the cause of 

 which is very ancient ; it takes its 

 source in the old quarrels and fre- 

 quent wars between the kings of 

 France and those of Aragon ; the 

 wars of the last century increased 

 it ; Catalonia gave itself to France, 

 and the Catalans can never forgive 

 the French for giving it up to its 

 old masters. The war of the suc- 

 cession at the beginning of the last 

 century completed the animosity ; 

 the French sacked Catalonia, sub- 

 dued the spirit of its inhabitants, 

 and compelled them to acknow- 

 ledge the legitimate authority of 

 their king. The facts are impres- 

 sed on the minds of these people 

 with indelible characters, and they 

 retain in their hearts an invincible 

 aversion to the nation that brought 

 them into subjection. 



The mantle and round hat, com- 

 mon in the other parts of Spain are 

 not worn in Catalonia; and the 

 Mayo jacket is scarcely ever seen; 

 a close coat, in the French fashion, 

 is the usual dress in almost all con- 

 ditions. The peasants who live in 

 the mountains wear a double- 

 breasted waistcoat, and over it a 

 kind of wide great coat, which 

 goes no lower than the knees ; they 

 call it a gambeto. There is besides 

 these a variety of dresses, among 

 the common people of both sexes, 

 the details of which would be too 

 long for insertion here. 



Vol. LI. 



The Catalans have a tongue pe- 

 culiar to tliemselves ; it is the an- 

 cient language of the provinces of 

 the south of France, the inhabi- 

 tants of which took Catalonia from 

 the Moors, and, peopling it, intro- 

 duced their laws, customs, and 

 usages ; and their patois, or dialect, 

 culled the Limousine tongue, has 

 continued down to our days in 

 Gascony, Languedoc, and Pro- 

 vence ; where it has undergone aU 

 terations more or less remarkable, 

 occasioned by the mixture of the 

 modern French ; h has remained 

 purer in Catalonia and Roussillon, 

 but with a mixture of Castilian in 

 the former of these two provinces. 

 The Catalan tongue has lost that 

 agreeable sweetness which for- 

 merly characterized it, and which 

 is better preserved in the kingdom 

 of Valencia; it has taken, in the 

 mouth of the Catalan, hard termi- 

 nations, and a rough and disagree- 

 able pronunciation : it has like- 

 wise at present a great resemblance 

 to the modern French tongue, in 

 the construction and turn of ex- 

 pression, in the grammar rules, 

 and in the sameness of a great many 

 of its words, which differ from the 

 French only in the termination. 

 It is spoken throughout Catalonia 

 with considerable variation, ac- " 

 cording to llie different districts; 

 with greater purity in the moun- 

 tains, and more altered in large 

 towns. The national prejudice of 

 the Catalan makes him prefer his 

 language to that of the Spaniards, 

 the Castilian is therefore little in 

 use in Catalonia, and when it is 

 heard there, it is disfigured and 

 scarcely to be known in conse- 

 quence of the mixture of Catalan 

 phrases and turns. 



3 F Character, 



