e daring determination of its ruler, would require a new age of
miracle." The Spaniard bit his lip, and was silent. "At all events, your
proposals do honour to the spirit of your country, and I shall not be the
man to throw obstacles in your way. Draw up a memoir; state your means,
your objects and your intentions, distinctly; and I shall lay it before
the government without delay."

"Senor Inglese, it shall be done. In that memoir, I shall simply say that
Spain has six ranges of mountains, all impregnable, and that the Spanish
people are resolved to defend them; that the country is one vast natural
fortress; that the Spanish soldier can sleep on the sand, can live on the
simplest food, and the smallest quantity of that food; that he can march
fifty miles a-day; that he is of the same blood as the conquerors of the
Moors, and with the soldiers of Charles V.; and that he requires only
discipline and leaders to equal the glory of his forefathers." His fine
features glanced with manly exultation.

"Still, before I can bring your case before the country, we must be
enabled to have an answer for the objections of the legislature. Your
provinces are scarcely less hostile to each other than they are to the
enemy. What plan can unite them in one system of defence? and, without
that union, how can resistance be effectual?"

"Spain stands alone," was the reply. "Her manners, her feelings, and her
people, have no examples in Europe. Her war will have as little similarity
to the wars of its governments. It will be a war, not of armies, but of
the shepherd, of the artificer, the muleteer, the contrabandist--a war of
all classes the peasant, the priest, the noble, nay, the beggar on the
highway. But this was the war of her ancestors, the war of the Asturias,
which cleared the country of the Moors, and will clear it of the French.
All Spain a mass of hostility, a living tide of unquenchable hatred and
consuming fire--the French battalions, pouring over the Pyrenees, will be
like battalions poured into the ocean. They will be engulfed; they will
never return. Our provinces are divided, but they have one invincible
bond--abhorrence of the French. Even their division is not infirmity, but
strength. They know so little of each other that even the conquest of one
half of Spain would be scarcely felt by the rest. This will be a supreme
advantage in the species of war which we contemplate--a war of desultory
but perpetual assaults, of hosti