eristic features of attraction and interest being
disseminated more generally throughout all their provinces or states.
Whoever wishes to find Spain herself, unalloyed, in her own character
and costume, and in her best point of view, should disembark in
Andalucia.

There, unlike the Castiles, and the still more northern provinces, in
which only the earth and air remain Spanish, and those not the best
Spanish--where all the picturesque and original qualities that
distinguish the population, are fast fading away--the upper classes in
their manners and costumes, and the Radicals in their politics, striving
to become French--there, on the contrary, all is natural and national in
its half-Arab nationality: and certainly nature and nationality have
given proof of taste in selecting for their last refuge, the most
delicious of regions; where earth and heaven have done their utmost to
form an abode, worthy of the most beautiful of the human, as well as the
brute creation.

I will not pause to inquire whether the reproach be justly addressed by
the other Spaniards, to the inhabitants of this province, of indolence
and love of pleasure, and of a disposition to deceitfulness, concealed
beneath the gay courtesy of their manners; it would, indeed, be a
surprising, a miraculous exception to the universal system of
compensations that we recognise as governing the world, had not this
people some prominent defect, or were they not exposed to some peculiar
element of suffering, to counterbalance in a degree the especial and
exclusive gifts heaped upon them. By what other means could their
perfect happiness be interfered with? Let us, then, allow them their
defects--the necessary shade in so brilliant a picture--defects which,
in reducing their felicity to its due level, are easily fathomed, and
their consequences guarded against, by sojourners amongst them, in whose
eyes their peculiar graces, and the charm of their manner of life, find
none the less favour from their being subject to the universal law of
humanity. They cannot be better painted in a few words, than by the
sketch, drawn by the witty and graceful Lantier, from the inhabitants
of Miletus. "Les Milesiens," he says, "sont aimables. Ils emportent,
peut-etre, sur les Atheniens" (read "Castillans") "par leur politesse,
leur amenite, et les agremens de leur esprit. On leur reproche avec
raison cette facilite--cette mollesse de moeurs, qui prend quelquefois
l'air de la licence.