of view I would ten
times sooner be English, but from the woman's--I have my doubts. Some
while ago certain papers, anxious perhaps to taste the comfortable joys
of self-righteousness, turned their attention to the brutality of
Spaniards, and a score of journalists wrote indignantly of bull-fights.
At the same time, by a singular chance, a prize-fighter was killed in
London, and the Spanish papers printed long tirades against the gross,
barbaric English. The two sets of writers were equally vehement,
inaccurate and flowery; but what seemed most remarkable was that each
side evidently felt quite unaffected horror and disgust for the
proceedings of the other. Like persons of doubtful character inveighing
against the vices of the age, both were so carried away by moral
enthusiasm as to forget that there was anything in their own histories
which made this virtuous fury a little absurd. There is really a good
deal in the point of view.

XXIV

[Sidenote: Corrida de Toros--I]

On the day before a bull-fight all the world goes down to Tablada to see
the bulls. Youth and beauty drive, for every one in Seville of the least
pretension to gentility keeps a carriage; the Sevillans,
characteristically, may live in houses void of every necessity and
comfort, eating bread and water, but they will have a carriage to drive
in the _paseo_. You see vehicles of all kinds, from the new landau with
a pair of magnificent Andalusian horses, or the strange omnibus drawn by
mules, typical of Southern Spain, to the shabby victoria, with a
broken-down hack and a decrepit coachman.

Tablada is a vast common without the town, running along the river side,
and here all manner of cattle are kept throughout the year. But the
fighting bulls are brought from their respective farms the morning
before the day of battle, and each is put in an enclosure with its
attendant oxen. The crowd looks eagerly, admiring the length of horn,
forecasting the fight.

The handsome brutes remain there till midnight, when they are brought to
the ring and shut in little separate boxes till the morrow. The
_encierro_, as it is called, is an interesting sight. The road has been
palisaded and the bulls are driven along by oxen. It is very curious to
wait in the darkness, in the silence, under the myriad stars of the
southern night. Your ear is astrung to hear the distant tramp; the
waiting seems endless. A sound is heard and every one runs to the side;
but nothing