reign influence have never penetrated deeply, the national character
can best be studied. Its intense pride, its fatalistic indolence and
ignorance, its honesty and its bigotry, tempered by a keen sense of
humour, are well-known characteristics. Apart from the peasant class,
Castilians have contributed more to the development of Spanish art and
literature than the inhabitants of any other region except, perhaps,
Andalusia, which claims to be regarded as supreme in architecture and
painting. Of the two great Spanish universities, Alcala de Henares
belonged in all respects to Castile, and Salamanca rose to equality with
Paris, Oxford or Bologna, under the purely Castilian influence of
Alphonso X. (1252-1284).

For a general description of Castile and its inhabitants, antiquities,
commerce, &c., see _Castillo la Nueva_, three illustrated volumes in
the series _Espana_, by J.M. Quadrado and V. de la Fuente (Barcelona,
1885-1886), and the _Guia del antiguo reino de Castilla_, by E.
Valverde y Alvarez (Madrid, 1886), which deals with the provinces of
Burgos, Santander, Logrono, Soria, Avila and Segovia. For the history,
see in addition to the works cited under SPAIN (section _History_),
_Cronicas de los reyes de Castilla_, by C. Rosell (Madrid, 1875-1877,
2 vols.); _Coleccion de las cronicas y memorias de los reyes de
Castilla_ (Madrid, 1779-1787, 7 vols.); and _Historia de las
communidades de Castilla_ (Madrid, 1897).

CASTILHO, ANTONIO FELICIANO DE (1800-1875), Portuguese man of letters,
was born at Lisbon. He lost his sight at the age of six, but the
devotion of his brother Augusto, aided by a retentive memory, enabled
him to go through his school and university course with success; and he
acquired an almost complete mastery of the Latin language and
literature. His first work of importance, the _Cartas de Echo e Narciso_
(1821), belongs to the pseudo-classical school in which he had been
brought up, but his romantic leanings became apparent in the _Primavera_
(1822) and in _Amor e Melancholia_ (1823), two volumes of honeyed and
prolix bucolic poetry. In the poetic legends _A noite de Castello_
(1836) and _Cuimes do bardo_ (1838) Castilho appeared as a full-blown
Romanticist. These books exhibit the defects and qualities of all his
work, in which lack of ideas and of creative imagination and an
atmosphere of artificiality are ill compensated for by a certain
emotional charm, great purity of dic