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Spanish-American race, and this, besides being a native characteristic,
was strongly implanted in colonial days by the very exigencies and
circumstances of the times. In some parts of the country, until recent
years, hotels or inns were unknown; and it was sufficient for the
traveller to knock at almost any door to ask and receive food and
shelter for himself and his retainers and beasts, even though the
people of the place might be ignorant of his name or business: and the
best that was forthcoming was put at his service. Something of
practical patriarchal simplicity governed life in regions more remote
from main routes of travel, which held, and indeed still hold, much of
charm for the traveller from lands whose hospitality--as Britain or the
United States--is the result often of ostentation or social necessity
rather than that of native kindliness. This amiable trait of more or
less pastoral communities, as Mexico and South America, tends naturally
to disappear before the influence of the commercial element which is
invading the country, and it is not to be expected that it will survive
always.

The Spanish-American possesses an ineradicable element of
_Quijotismo_--he will tell us so himself--and this element seems to
have become stronger in the New World than in Spain, which gave it
origin. The Mexican has it to the full, like the Peruvian; doubtless it
arises largely from the conditions of caste brought about by the
existence of the Mestizo and the Indian. Trembling on the verge of two
races, his eyes looking towards the land of his progenitors, the
enshrined Spain of his dreams, with something of _race-nostalgia_--if
we may be permitted to coin the term--yearning for the distinction of
the white skin and traditions of European civilisation, yet bound to
the life of and race of his own _patria_ by reason of the native blood
within his veins, the Hispanic Mexican has cultivated a sensitive
social spirit which tinges his character and action in every-day life.
From this largely arise his courtesy and spirit of
hospitality--although these are undeniably innate--and principally his
love of pomp and externals, the keeping up of appearances, and his
profound eloquence. The Mexican is intensely eloquent. His speakings
and writings are profuse in their use of the fulness of the Spanish
language, and teem with rich words and phrases to express abstract
ideas. Indeed, judged by Anglo-Saxon habit, they would be termed
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