a view to
your information, would give an additional interest to my tour, as well
as encouragement in surmounting the obstacles to be met with among a
people not yet broken in to the curiosity of tourists.

You professed also, with a modesty always becoming to talent and worth,
a complete ignorance respecting Spain: adding, that you would be
grateful for every sort of information; and that you were anxious to be
enlightened on the subject not only of the monuments and fine arts, but
also of the history of that country, of which you had never had an
opportunity of informing yourself; summing up by the enumeration of the
three names of the Cid, Charles the Fifth, and Roderic the Goth, the
entire amount of your acquaintance with the leading characters of
Spanish history.

Indeed, the ignorance you profess with some exaggeration, is more or
less general in our country; nor is it surprising that such should be
the case. Spain has been in modern times in the background of European
progress. The thousand inconveniences of its routes and inns have
deterred the most enterprising from making it a place of resort; and
while a hundred less interesting scenes of travel, such as Baden-Baden,
Bohemia, sporting adventures in Norway, or winterings in St. Petersburg,
have claimed your attention during the reposes of quadrilles, and
substantiated the conversation of several of your morning visitors,
Spain has been unnoticed and unknown--laid on the shelf with the Arabian
Nights--considered a sort of fabulous country, which it would be
charming to know, but with which there would never be a chance of
forming an acquaintance; and you have contented yourself with a sort of
general information respecting it, derived from a few romances and
poems. You are intimate with Boabdil and the wars of Granada, but to
those events is limited your knowledge of its ancient history; and the
reigns of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second, with the addition of
some confused visions, in which _autos-da-fe_ and dungeons contrast in a
rather gloomy background with laughing majas, whirling their
castagnettes to the soft cadences of guitars, fill up the remaining
space allotted to Spain in your recollections.

It would be a task full of interest for me--possessed, as I shall
probably be, of ample opportunities for its accomplishment--to draw up
for your information a summary of the leading events of Spanish
history; connecting them by the chain of reigns of