fallen condition. But the popular notion is
the other way. "Who says Spain, says every thing;" so runs the proverb.
And yet whilst they mouth about Espana, and exalt it, not in the way of
an empty boast, which the utterer believeth not, but in full conviction
of the good foundation of their vaunts, above all the kingdoms of the
earth, they are, in fact, the least homogeneous nation in
existence,--the least patriotic, in the comprehensive sense of the word.
Nowhere are distinctions of provinces so strongly marked, in no country
are so many antipathies to be found between inhabitants of different
districts. "Like the German, they may sing and spout about Fatherland:
in both cases the theory is splendid, but in practice each Spaniard
thinks his own province or town the best in the Peninsula, and himself
the finest fellow in it." The _patriotisme du clocher_, with which
French provincials have been reproached, but which, in France, the
system of centralisation has done so much to eradicate, the prejudice
which narrows a man's sympathies to his own country or department, is
extra-ordinarily conspicuous in Spaniards. It is traceable to various
causes; to the former divisions of the country, when it consisted of
several kingdoms, independent and jealous of each other; to want of
convenient communications and to the stay-at-home habits of the people;
and also to the unimportance of the capital, which title has been so
frequently transferred from city to city. When one Spaniard talks of
another as his countryman, he does not refer to their being both
Spaniards, but means that both are from the same province. "The much
used phrase, 'Espanolismo,'" says Mr. Ford, who is very hard upon the
poor Dons on this head, "expresses rather a dislike of foreign
dictation, and the self-estimation of Spaniards, 'Espanoles sobre
todos,' than any real patriotic love of country, however highly they
rate its excellencies and superiority to every other one under heaven."

So much for a go off. We find this in the first chapter, and few of the
subsequent ones conclude without some similar rap on the knuckles for
the countrymen of Don Quixote; raps always dexterously applied, and in
most instances well deserved. On Spanish securities, (to use a
misnomer,) whether loan, land, or rail, and on the _unremitting_
punctuality of Spanish finance ministers, Mr. Ford is particularly
severe, and not without good cause. The _Hispanica fides_ of the present
day