tion equal to that of the
most favoured spots of the earth,--Greece, and the parts between the
Nile, the Euphrates and the Mediterranean alone being excepted. As
tested by their agricultural mode of life, their commercial and mining
industry, their susceptibility of discipline as soldiers, and, above
all, by the size and number of their cities, the Iberian of Spain is on
the same level with the Celt of Gaul, and the Celt of Gaul on that of
the Italian of Italy,--_i.e._, _as far as the civilization of the latter
is his own, and not of Greek origin_. But this is a point of European
rather than Spanish ethnology.

That the obstinate spirit of resistance to organized armies by means of
a _guerilla_ warfare, the savage patriotism which suggests such
expressions as _war even to the knife_, and the endurance behind stone
walls, which characterizes the modern Spaniards, is foreshadowed in the
times of their earliest history, has often been remarked, and that
truly. Numantia is an early Saragossa, Saragossa a modern Numantia.
Viriathus has had innumerable counterparts. Where the indomitable
Cantabrian held out against the power of Rome, the Biscayan of the year
1851 adheres to his privileges and his language; and what the Cantabrian
was to the Roman, the Asturian was to the Moor. Both trusted their
freedom to their impracticable mountains and stubborn spirits--and kept
it accordingly. It is an easy matter to refer the peculiarities of the
Spanish character to the infusion of Oriental blood; and with some of
them it may be the case. But with many of them, the reference is a false
one. Half the Spanish character was Iberic and Lusitanian before either
Jew or Saracen had seen the Rock of Gibraltar.

Of the early Spanish religion, we know but little. A remarkable passage
in Strabo speaks to their literature. They had an _alphabet_. This is
known from coins and inscriptions. And it was of foreign origin--Greek
or Ph[oe]nician. This nothing but the most inconsiderate and uncritical
patriotism can deny. Denied, however, it has been; and the indigenous
and independent evolution of an alphabet has been claimed; the
particular tribe to which it has more especially been ascribed being the
_Turdetani_. These--and the passage I am about to quote is the passage
of Strabo just alluded to--are "put forward as the wisest of the Iberi,
and they have the use of letters; and they have records of ancient
history, and poems, and metrical laws for si