Notes of Spanish Travel. 27 



general strain of remark about Spain in guide-books is that it 

 is a backward country. He could not confirm that remark, 

 for, so far as his experience went, he would say it was rather a 

 forward country, and a country which was now taking strides 

 to put itself abreast of the age. He had been struck with the 

 visible signs of the restoration of buildings, and that seemed to 

 him to be an index to what was going on in other respects. 

 Modern improvements are everywhere to be seen. The 

 country is creeping on, and, though its pace may not be 

 rapid, it certainly is not going backward. One curious result 

 of its long delay behind and its present advance is that in 

 Spanish civilization we miss certain intermediate stages. For 

 example, we expect in most countries to find bells in use in 

 inns. In Spain we may find them, but if we do they are 

 always electric bells — those or none ; — the intermediate stage 

 does not exist ; we pass at once from the time they had no 

 bells at all to the time when they determined to put in those of 

 the latest make. He had been favoured with good weather in 

 his rambles through Spain ; and, as regarded the sanitary ar- 

 rangements in Spanish inns, cleanliness, drainage, baths, and 

 general accommodation, they are certainly better than are 

 to be found in the South of France, and much better than are 

 to be found, as a rule, in the North of Italy. The food is 

 plentiful, of good quality, and savoury — he was speaking accord- 

 ing to the measure of his own palate. He had been told to be 

 on the look out for robbers, and he had been asked to take a 

 revolver with him, but he told the person who spoke to 

 him on that subject that a revolver was a rather heavy piece of 

 furniture in a knapsack. He had simply taken a box of 

 vesuvians with him, and found they were quite as rare 

 in Spain as in Pennsylvania, and that they produced the 

 same electrifying effect ; and one of them was equal to three 

 cigars. Spain was, no doubt, in times past, and may be 

 yet, infested with highwaymen, but, on the other hand, he had 

 found the people generally to be singularly honest, and he had 

 many instances of remarkable and scrupulous honesty in deal- 



