204 Unexplored Spain 
loses that; he perceives no more difficulty in the perilous suerte 
de vol-d-pié than in the simpler but more attractive suerte de 
recibir, and a hundred similar details. Finally, before erystallis- 
ing a judgment, critics should endeavour to see a few second- 
or third-rate corridas. It is at these that the relative values of 
the forces opposed—brute strength and human skill—are dis- 
played in truer and more speaking contrast. At set bull-fights 
of the first-class, the latter quality is often so marked as partly 
to obscure the difficulties and dangers it surmounts. Watch 
toréros of finished skill and the game seems easy—as when 
some phenomenal batsman, well set, knocks the best bowling 
in England all over the field. Yet that bowling, the expert 
knows, is not easy. Nor are the bulls. At second-rate fights 
the forces placed face to face are more evenly balanced; and 
there it is often the bull that scores. 
THE MIuRA QUESTION 
A raging controversy, illuminative of Tauromachia, has 
recently split into two camps the bull-fighting world and 
agitated one-half of Spain. The breeding of the fighting-bull 
is in this country a semi-esthetic pursuit, analogous to that of 
short-horns or racehorses in England, and the possession of a 
notable herd the ambition of many of the grandees and big 
landowners of Spain. 
Among the various crack herds that of Don Eduardo Miura 
of Sevilla had always occupied a prominent rank; while during 
recent years the power and dashing prowess of the Miwreno bulls 
had raised that breed almost to a level apart, invested with a 
halo of semi-mysterious quality. Captures occurred at every 
corrida ; man after man had gone down before these redoubted 
champions, and the minds of surviving matadors—saturated one 
and all with gipsy-sprung superstition—began to attribute secret 
or supernatural powers to the dreaded herd. Not a swordsman 
but felt unwonted qualm when meeting a Miwreno on the sanded 
arena. Showy players with the capa and the banderillos proved 
capable of giving attractive exhibitions, but it was another 
matter when the matador stood alone, face to face with his foe. 
Even second-class toréros can, with almost any bull, show off 
their accomplishments in these lighter séances; but in the 
