public of
visionaries. Don Quijote de la Mancha himself could scarcely have made a
more pure-intentioned yet more unpractical President. Castelar, with his
honest, unsophisticated opinions and theories, his unexampled oratory,
which is said to have carried away crowds of men who did not understand
or hear a word that he said, with the rhythm of his language, the simple
majesty and beauty of his delivery, launched the nation into a
government that might have been suited to the angels in heaven, or to
what the denizens of this earth may become in far distant aeons of
evolution--a republic of dreams, headed by a dreamer. The awakening was
rude, but it was efficient. When Castelar found that in place of
establishing a millennium of peace and universal prosperity, he had let
loose over the land all the elements of disorder and of evil, he had the
greatness to acknowledge himself mistaken: his own reputation never
troubled him, and he admitted that the Cortes, from which he had hoped
so much, worked evil, not good. It is said that he himself called on
General Pavia, the Captain-General of Madrid, to clear them out. The
deputies--Castelar had withdrawn--sat firm: "Death rather than
surrender," they cried. Pavia, however, ordered his men to fire once
down the empty lobbies, and the hint was enough: the Cortes dispersed,
and Pavia, had he so minded it, might have been military dictator of
Spain. But he had no such ambition, though there were not wanting those
who ascribed it to him.

[Illustration: THE ESCURIAL]

As for Castelar, when angrily charged with inconsistency, he said:
"Charge me with inconsistency, if you please. I will not defend myself.
Have I the right to prefer my own reputation to the safety of my
country? Let my name perish, let posterity pronounce its anathema
against me, let my contemporaries send me into exile! Little care I! I
have lived long enough! But let not the Republic perish through my
weaknesses, and, above all, let no one say that Spain has perished in
our hands!" Castelar went back to his chair of philosophy, which he had
never resigned, poor as he left it, to the modest home and the devoted
sister whom he loved so well--and no one laughed! Is there really any
other country than Spain where such things can happen? His enthusiasm,
his high-mindedness, his failures, his brave acknowledgment that he had
failed, were accepted by the country in the exact spirit in which he had
offered himself to her s