f skies was over my head, the most billowy of seas was dashing
and foaming round me, and my eye was in continual admiration of the noble
mountain barriers which, in a thousand shapes, guard the western coast of
Spain from the ocean. At length the bay of Corunna opened before us; our
anchor dropped, and I made my first step on the most picturesque shore,
and among the most original people, of Europe. My destination was Madrid;
but it was essential that I should ascertain all the facts in my power
from the various provincial governments as I passed along; and I thus
obtained a more ample knowledge of the people than could have fallen to
the lot of the ordinary traveller. I consulted with their juntas, I was
present at their festivals, I rode with their hidalgos, and I marched with
their troops. One of the peculiarities which, as an Englishman, has always
interested me in foreign travel is, that it brings us back to a period
different from the existing age at home. All descending from a common
stock, every nation of Europe has made a certain advance; but the advance
has been of different degrees. Five hundred years ago, they were all
nearly alike. In the Netherlands, I continually felt myself carried back
to the days of the Protectorate; I saw nearly the same costume, the same
formality of address, and the same habits of domestic life. In Germany, I
went back a century further, and saw the English primitive style of
existence, the same stiff architecture, the same mingling of stateliness
and simplicity, not forgetting the same homage to the "divine right of
kings." In Spain, I found myself in the thirteenth century, and but for
the language, the heat, and the brown visages around me, could have
imagined myself in England, in the days when "barons bold" still exercised
the rights of feudalism, when gallant archers killed the king's deer
without the king's permission, and when the priest was the lawgiver of the
land.

Day by day, I saw the pilgrim making his weary way from shrine to shrine;
the landowner caracoling his handsome horse over wild heaths and half-made
highways--that horse caparisoned with as many fantastic trappings as the
charger of chivalry, and both horse and rider forming no feeble
representation of the knight bound on adventure. I saw the monastery of
our old times, exhibiting all its ancient solidity, sternness, and pomp;
with its hundred brethren; its crowd of sallow, silent domestics; its
solemn service;