6 WILD SPAIN. 



between themselves and the foreigner of alien blood. But 

 we are rambling, and must remember that in this chapter 

 we only propose to deal with 



Andalucia. 



Often and well as in bygone days this sunny province 

 has been described, yet the modern life and nineteenth- 

 century conditions of rural Andalucia are now compara- 

 tively unknown — have fallen into oblivion amid the more 

 ambitious and eventful careers of other countries. And, 

 indeed, there is needed the genius of a Cervantes or a Ford 

 adequately to depict or portray the quaint and picturesque 

 ensemble of this old-world corner of Europe, so distinct 

 from all the rest, and unchanged since the days of Don 

 Quixote. Spain, the land of anomalj- and paradox, is a 

 complex theme not lightly to be understood or described 

 by aliens, albeit possessed of that first qualification, the 

 passport to every Spanish heart — a sympathetic nature. 

 Around the country and its people, around everything 

 Spanish, there hangs, in our eyes, a grace and an infinite 

 charm ; but it is a subtle charm, hardly to be described or 

 defined in words of ours. 



The very inertia, the mediaeval conditions thinly 

 veneered, which characterize modern Andalucia in an era 

 of insensate haste and self-assertion, prove to some a 

 solace and a fascination. There are not wanting minds 

 which, amidst different environments, can enjoy and 

 admire such primitive simplicity — stagnation, if you will — 

 and find therein a grateful and refreshing change. In 

 Southern Spain life is dreamed away in sunshine and in 

 an atmosphere forgetful of the present, but redolent of the 

 past. The modern Andaluz is content de s'econter viire, 

 while the ancient chivalry of his race and his land's 

 romantic history is evidenced by crumbling castle on each 

 towering height ; by the palace-fortresses and magnificent 

 ecclesiastical fabrics of the middle ages : while the aban- 

 doned aqueducts, disused highways and broken bridges of 

 the Eoman period, attest a bygone energy. 



