amous. In the royal
collection of Madrid, in the venerable cathedrals of Seville, in the
Louvre, in the London National Gallery, the lover of the beautiful
may be charmed by the warmth of color, the accuracy of technique,
the rounded outline and saintly salvation of Murillo.

"Many a quaint moralist, many a stately poet, many a priestly
chronicler attests the genius of Spanish literature, but if these
had not been, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza had been its title to
immortality. The admirable attributes of Spanish character nowhere
found warmer appreciation than with our own countrymen. What Prescott
did for the statecraft, and stern martial renown of the Spaniards,
Washington Irving, with melodious prose and gentle humor, surpassed in
his kindly portrayal of Spanish character in his charming romance, The
Conquest of Granada. It is perhaps due to the drollery and Addisonian
humor of that gifted American that we have never been able to estimate
the Spaniard quite so seriously as he estimates himself, or, indeed,
as his stern and uncompromising nature deserves. The truth is, Spanish
policy has ever been insidiously and persistently inimical to the
American people, and has culminated in deeds more atrocious than those
which have rendered infamous the baleful memory of Pedro the Cruel.

"We all know how in 1492 his holiness, Alexander VI., in order to
prevent unseemly collisions between Christian princes, published a
bull by which he assigned to Spain all discoveries lying west of an
imaginary line drawn 300 leagues to the westward of the Cape Verde
islands. All discoveries to the east were confined to Portugal.

"All of South America save Brazil and the two Guineas, all Central
America, Mexico, the entire territory west of the Mississippi, now
embraced by the United States, beautiful Cuba, from whose eastern
province of Santiago Ponce de Leon across the lucent waves of the
tropical sea coveted the ambrosial forests and fertile meadows of Porto
Rico, whence he was to sail to the floral empire of Florida. But this
was not all of Spain's magnificent domain. Far across the waters of
the South Pacific was the now famous cluster of islands bearing the
name of the Spanish king. And from their great cities, via Guam, and
Hawaii, and San Francisco, to Acapulco, sailed the famous Manila fleet,
huge galleons, loaded to the gunwales with the silken and golden wealth
of the orient. Where are her colonies now? The declaration of the
s