science-stricken,--she would, by way of
compensation, allow parties to pass unmolested.

From such instances as these a portion of the Spanish population must be
considered amenable to the charge brought against them; but there are
peculiarities of a different stamp, which mark the Spaniards in
general, and are more deserving of notice in a summary of the national
characteristic qualities. It is impossible, for instance, not to be
struck by the intelligence and tact, independent of cultivation, which
pervade all classes. Whether the denizens of these southern climes are
indebted to the purity of their atmosphere, for this gift of rapid
perception, in which they surpass our northern organizations, or to
whatever cause they may owe it; the fact leads to involuntary
speculation on what might have been the results, in a country so
distinguished, besides, by its natural advantages, had the Arab
supremacy lasted until our days. At a period when education was
generally held in no estimation in Europe, the first care of almost
every sovereign of that race was usually directed to the establishment,
or improvement, of the public schools, in which the sciences and
languages were taught at the royal expense. No town being unprovided
with its schools, it is difficult to imagine to what degree of
superiority over the rest of Europe the continuation of such a system
would have raised a people so gifted as to be capable of supplying, by
natural intelligence, the almost universal absence of information and
culture.

You continually meet with such instances of uncultivated intelligence as
the following. I was occupied in sketching in a retired part of the
environs of Madrid, when a ragged, half-naked boy, not more than ten or
eleven years of age, and employed in watching sheep, having to pass near
me, stopped to examine my work. He remained for nearly a quarter of an
hour perfectly still, making no movement except that of his eyes, which
continually travelled from the paper to the landscape, and back from
that to the paper. At length, going away, he exclaimed, "Que paciencia,
Dios mio!"

The following is an example of the absence of cultivation, where it
might have been expected to exist. A student leaving the university of
Toledo, at the age of twenty-seven, told me he had studied there eleven
years, and had that day received his diploma of barrister, which, when
sent to Madrid, where it would be backed by the sanction of the
minist