usly, by successive
operations, purifies and enlightens; classes men and events; elevates the
important and the true; and gives praise and obloquy to whom they are
severally due. And in the Peninsula, more than in any other country, is
this kind of classification requisite. Amidst the various parties and
factions, the strange contradictions of the national character, the
interminable web of intrigue and political manoeuvre, how arduous the
task to unravel the truth, to throw a clear light upon the state and
prospects of Spain, and explain the hidden and complicated machinery by
which many of the recent events in that country have been brought about!

We have now lying before us a book in which this task has been attempted,
and, we are disposed to think, by no means without success. It is the work
of a man who has evidently passed a considerable time in the Peninsula;
and, after becoming well acquainted with the language and habits of the
people, has studied the peculiarities of their manners, feelings, and
institutions, with a keen and observant eye. The result of his
observations he has committed to paper pretty much as they were made; so
at least we infer from the style of his book, which, without being on any
regular plan, touches upon every subject connected with Spain, nearly, as
it would appear, in the order in which they chanced to come uppermost in
the writer's mood of the moment. The frequent change which this occasions,
from grave subjects to gay, and _vice versa_, serves, perhaps as well as
any more regularly preconceived plan could have done, to carry the general
reader pleasantly through two rather copious volumes; in which, whatever
nay be their deficiencies, there is certainly no lack of variety; while
the style in which they are written has about it a characteristic vigour
and originality, and at times a considerable degree of humour. We are not
informed how long the author has lived in Spain; but we suspect that his
residence there has been of considerable duration, and that he has become
in some degree _Espanolisado_. We infer this from an occasional foreign
idiom; from his intimate knowledge of the habits of various classes, which
only a long residence in the country could have brought in his way; and
from a familiarity with Spanish proverbial language, which now and then
breaks out in an amusing and Sancho-like passage. In short, the whole book
is characteristic both of the man who has written it, and