CERVANTES.

We will now pass to the prison of Seville; from the cell in which Boëthius wrote his Confolation ; from Windfor and the Tower, where Surrey wooed and won the Muse; to that in which Cervantes planned his immortal DON QUIXOte.

Spain was at the height of her glory and power. The magnificent reign of Charles the Fifth, and the acquifition of her American poffeffions, had made her the envy and the fear of Europe. There were splendour, pomp, and apparently exhaustless wealth at her command; and, reafoning from the appearance of things, a long lease of power and greatness feemed in ftore for her. Looking at the Spain of to-day, we have fome difficulty in picturing to ourselves the Spain to whose throne the gloomy Philip the Second fucceeded. Only the philofopher or the statesman, accustomed to penetrate beneath the furface of things, could have seen through the hollownefs of all this pomp, the weaknefs of all this power. The England of that time, and the Spain. of that time, what a contrast! And yet the wife

man would fee in the fmall, fea-furrounded, and poor island, more hope of a great and glorious future, than in the wealthy, wide-fpread, and dazzling fplendours of the Spanish power. In England there was ftrength of character, love of industry, daring adventure, genuine honefty, a liberated religion, and a liberty-loving people. In Spain gold, procured without commenfurate labour, had fapped the old genuine Spanish character; honeft, painstaking industry was fcorned; the gloomy fanaticifm of a Philip the Second had found in the fword of an Alva, and in the fecret and ubiquitous horrors of the Inquifition, proper inftruments for the fuppreffion of all freedom of thought, all nobleness of foul, and all liberty of faith. To the eye thus looking "before and after," all the magnificence of the court, the gorgeoufnefs of the religious ceremonial, the oftentatious pride of the nobility, the arrogance of the people, united with the fad licentiousness which then marked Spanish manners, were but indications of the fure and inevitable decay of the whole. Like Sodom apples, the outfide was glowing and tempting, but within there was a taste of rottennefs and of death.

To the majority of people, however, then living, Spain was a wonderful and a wonder-working place. At this period of her history it was that her genius more fully developed itself than at any other. Then

lived and did their work the men who are now her greatest glory, her chiefeft honour. As it had been in the history of so many other nations, so it was in Spain; fhe culminated in all things at the fame time, and the fame moment which witneffed her material, alfo beheld her intellectual glory. From the defeat of the Armada she began to decline -vifibly, rapidly to decline. In that undertaking she had gathered all her forces, and they were shattered at a blow. When she went "forth the little Isle to fmite," she had proved her utmost strength; and that strength had paffed away into very weaknefs before the calm, undaunted courage of the freemen of England. All that the poet advises, when calling her to prepare for a combat which ended in her ruin, she had done; his words are

"Nor arm in haste, nor fitful fury breathe;

Thy long wrought, flowly sharpened sword unsheathe!
The toil of feven long years expend

This marvel of the main to raise,
Each beam of thy wide brightness blend
Into a world-confounding blaze-

No strain on thy vast strength withhold,
Nor spare each vaffal realm, nor stint thy Western gold!
Call forth thy men of might

Ablaze with glory from Lepanto's fight
To dim that luftre in the mightier fame

Of England's fallen throne and quenched name.'

Spain never recovered from the exhauftion which

fuch a conteft for dominion caufed.

Ere the Armada

* "The Anniversaries."-Thomas H. Gill.

failed fhe was at her acme of power; when it was defeated by English valour, shattered by the rocks which rise now as then to preserve her shores inviolable from the foreign foe, Spain's doom-hour was tolled for ever. Tolled, too, at a time when she was honoured by her greatest children; for the age of the Armada was the age of Calderon, Lope de Vega, and Cervantes; fo ftrangely do the good and evil of this world blend; and fo myfteriously does God combine the greatest bleffings and the deepest curfes of a nation!

We can give but a brief sketch of the life of Cervantes here. Like the lives of moft of earth's great ones, it was hard and fevere. He was none of fortune's darlings, in the ufual acceptance of that word. He was a brave and genuine man; and though often forely tried, never was less than a brave and genuine man. The nobleft, boldeft,

trueft, and most thorough hero of his own heroic

"That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the funfhine, and opposed

Free heart, free forehead."

As foldier, as prifoner, as author, he was the fame; a wife, noble, joyous-hearted, truthful man; an object worthy of reverence and of love. Nearly three centuries have paffed fince he was gathered

Tennyfon's "Ulyffes."

to his fathers; but he ftill lives, and will ever live, the type of the highest and the pureft of his race. The greatness of his nation has paffed away; her influence has ceased; her name is a bye-word and a mockery among the peoples; her court is an abomination; her rule a difgrace; her religion hollow mummery and an empty fhow; but the great Cervantes ftill lives to tell us what fhe once was, and what a great, large-hearted, univerfal genius fhe once poffeffed. The Spain of the Cid is no more; the Spain of the old ballads belongs to the past; no more do they fing

"Free were we born,-'tis thus they cry-though to our king we owe The homage and the fealty behind his creft to go;

By God's beheft our aid he shares, but God did ne'er command That we should leave our children heirs of an enflaved land." 73#

No more do they hold their own in Europe; degraded, enslaved, corrupted, her glory has departed; but the genius of Cervantes can never die; and Don Quixote will cheer, delight, edify, and instruct as long as people can read, and hearts are of the fame material as they are now. "The great man of Spain fat obfcure at the time, all dark and poor, a maimed foldier; writing his 'Don Quixote' in prison;"† but the great man of Spain is now enshrined in every heart, and has had

• Lockhart's Spanish Ballads, "The March of Bernardo del Carpio."

+ Carlyle's Effays, "Sir Walter Scott,"