At the end of the century Spain found herself in a wholly new condition. The leaven had begun to work in its earliest days, though the French Revolution horrified by its excesses more than its new doctrines attracted. But during the Peninsular War the great mass of the people, inert until the foreign invasion woke it to life, mixed with the English soldiers and became familiar with a new aspect of things. At that time, and throughout the long battle with absolutism, there were men of ideas even amongst the lowest of the 'patriots'; during the sixty years of struggle the idea had crystallised into an ideal. The wholesale banishment of the reformers had sent them in shoals to England, where they learned what liberty was and something of the practical means by which it could be attained; such a man was Juan Prim. Alfonso XII himself came a new man to a new country; and since his accession, with all its faults of administration and a corruption which dies hard, it has been a constitutional monarchy, with an orderly succession of Ministries, and there have been no more Pronunciamentos.

At the beginning of the century two thirds of the wealth of the country lay idle in the hands of the Church. No general educational system existed. A great part of the population were monks and nuns and ecclesiastics, doing nothing to add to the prosperity of the country while fattening on the contributions of its hardly-taxed workers. Trade and industry there was practically none, except in Barcelona. Its once great manufactures had died out, and the population of its towns dwindled to less than a quarter of their number in the sixteenth century. But, with all the disadvantages of her long wars and her political troubles during the past century, Spain has forged ahead in a remarkable way, at first in spite of her governments, latterly with some occasional help from them. Since 1876 she has had universal suffrage, complete liberty of the press, of public meeting, and of association, trial by jury-in fact all the free institutions of the most advanced countries. There is an excellent system of elementary education and of secondary schools, with colleges for the training of teachers in every part of the country. Religious liberty is now absolute where, within the memory of living men, it was impossible to obtain sepulture for a Protestant or other heretic. Electrical

science is, perhaps, in a more forward state than with us, at all events, it is more widely diffused; and it is no uncommon thing to find a remote country village lighted by electricity. The telegraphic service is better organised in the isolated country districts of Spain than it is in England. Railways now connect every portion of the kingdom with Madrid and with the seaport towns with which Spain is so richly provided. Universities, schools of science, libraries, artistic and learned societies abound where once, under priestly rule, to be cultured was to be suspect.

The population of Spain has increased from 10,541,220 in 1797 to 17,500,000, of whom thirty-two per cent. are able to read and write as against twenty per cent. in 1868. Her commerce and industries have advanced by leaps and bounds. Take the case of Bilbao alone. A few years ago a sleepy little town, to-day it has a population of 66,000, five railway stations, electric tramways, etc., and has become the most important shipping outlet of Spain. Yet it is not far ahead of many others, all advancing rapidly. But the most important change of all has yet to be mentioned. The rapid advance of Spain in all directions is no longer due to foreign capital and alien labour; her own people are investing their money in the public works and in the commercial and industrial companies which are forwarding her interests in all parts of the world. Her own colleges are turning out engineers and scientists; she is at this moment abreast of Europe in wireless telegraphy and all the modern appliances of science. Of late years agricultural colleges have been educating a new race of cultivators of her wonderfully fertile lands; and the young King, who has made this a special subject of study as being of the greatest possible import in the development of the country, has an experimental farm on a large scale in the royal estate of El Pardo.

In the very darkest of her past days Spain never wholly lost her place in art and letters; but with the new era her painters, sculptors, poets, and writers have sprung into fresh activity, and are taking a high place in the literary and artistic world. Under her learned societies the interesting records of her past art are daily being brought to light, while her critical historians are throwing light on hitherto obscure problems. Of her

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novelists none is perhaps so widely known as Benito Pérez Galdós, whose play Electra' brought the burning clerical question to the front a year or two ago, and did much to solve it so far as it has been solved. The Cambridge University Press have recently brought out an English edition in Spanish of the first volume of Galdós' Episodes Nacionales '-'Trafalgar,' with copious notes by Mr F. A. Kirkpatrick, for the aid of students wishing to learn the language. It is by no means the most interesting, but it is the first of his historical series; and its subject makes it attractive to English readers. It is to be hoped that those who thus make acquaintance with these volumes will go on and study them all. By no other means can one obtain so vivid a picture of Spain and of her people during the nineteenth century; the historical narrative is trustworthy, and the characterisation admirable throughout; and the strange anomalies, as they seem to us, of national character and modes of life become realities to the reader.

Perhaps no man has done more to make Spain known to England, or indeed to Europe, than Richard Ford, whose incomparable Guidebook has been freely annexed, as he tells us, in translations in other countries. A man of wide culture, remarkable linguistic powers, and a kindly and sympathetic manner which made him warm friends among all classes of a people who may be easily led but never driven, his account of the Spain of his day (1820 to 1830) remains at once the most complete and the most learned that has ever been given. It is a classic, and the basis of all subsequent books on the subject. His letters, or rather a small portion of them, with useful notes by the editor, putting the reader au courant with the historical events of the day referred to in the text, show the man with his vivacity and his enormous diligence, and form a pleasing record of one who should not easily be forgotten. It is not remarkable, when we consider what the condition of the country was, that the letters contain little reference to politics, though we find vivid pictures of some of the men of the day—as Quesada, for instance, for whom Ford seems to entertain considerable respect--and an interesting account of the sorry spectacle of the funeral of Ferdinand VII.

The reprint of Borrow's 'Bible in Spain' simultaneously with The Letters of Richard Ford' is opportune as throwing more light on a period which contrasts so strongly with the Spain of to-day. This extraordinary man, with the combined instincts of a gipsy and a local preacher, travelled all over Spain, living the life of its own vagabonds, and honestly believed, as Ford himself says, that he was converting the country by the distribution of a Spanish translation of the Bible. His descriptions are supported by Ford, who says in several of his letters that he knew him to have passed over the same routes and seen the same people as himself. Even those who knew the country a generation later, when more liberal views prevailed, find it difficult to believe that, had the people understood the abuse of all they held sacred which he represents himself as pouring out on all occasions, he could have come alive out of the country. If he could return and see the present condition of religious liberty in Spain, he would doubtless ascribe it to the Bibles which he distributed.

At the beginning of the twentieth century we may confidently say that Spain's golden age is before her, for she has never yet been truly one nation as she is now, nor has she ever had education and enlightenment placed in the hands of her humblest peasants as it is to-day. Marvellous as her progress has been in the last forty years, she has only set her feet on the lowest rungs of the ladder she is mounting. It is well for us to remember that, whether the fact be due to her large infusion of Gothic blood, or perhaps even some earlier relationship, there is an inherent sympathy between the Spanish nation and our own. Englishmen and Englishwomen love the country when they know it, and settle there willingly, while the Spaniards are unceasing in their admiration of English institutions. Their men of business are doing all in their power to strengthen the bonds of good fellowship; and a more intimate acquaintance with the nation which, like our own, adopts dignity, loyalty, and the love of God' as its ideal, should enable England and Spain to work side by side in the civilisation of the future.

Art. II.-WILLIAM BLAKE, POET AND PAINTER. 1. The Poems of William Blake. Edited by W. B. Yeats. London: Lawrence and Bullen, 1893.

2. The Poetical Works of William Blake. A new and verbatim text from the originals, with notes and prefaces by J. Sampson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905. 3. The Lyrical Poems of William Blake. Text by John Sampson, with an introduction by Walter Raleigh. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905.

4. The Poetical Works of William Blake. Edited by Edwin J. Ellis. Two vols. London: Chatto, 1906. 5. The Prophetic Books of William Blake: Jerusalem. Milton. Edited by E. R. D. Maclagan and A. G. B. Russell. London: Bullen, 1904, 1907.

6. William Blake. Vol. I: Illustrations of the Book of Job. With a general introduction by Laurence Binyon. London: Methuen, 1906.

7. The Letters of William Blake, together with a Life by Frederick Tatham. Edited from original manuscripts, with an introduction and notes, by A. G. B. Russell. London: Methuen, 1906.

8. William Blake: a Critical Essay. By A. C. Swinburne. London: Chatto, 1866. (New edition 1906.) 9. The Life of William Blake. By Alexander Gilchrist. New edition, with an introduction by W. Graham Robertson. London: Lane, 1907.

10. Die Mystik, die Künstler, und das Leben. By Rudolf Kassner. Leipzig, 1900. (pp. 14-56 William Blake.') 11. Un Maître de l'Art: Blake le Visionnaire. By François Benoît. Paris: Laurens, 1907.

12. William Blake. By Arthur Symons. London: Constable, 1907.

13. William Blake; Mysticisme et Poésie. By P. Berger Paris: Soc. Franç. d'Imprimerie et Librairie, 1907.

14. The Real Blake. By Edwin J. Ellis: London: Chatto, 1907.

En

15. Die Visionäre Kunstphilosophie von W. Blake. glisch von A. G. B. Russell. Deutsch von S. Zweig, 1906. (Edinburgh Review,' Jan. 1906.)

And other works.

BLAKE believed imagination, purified from sense deceptions and complete as heaven, to be the only reality; this