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Untitled Article
To the story of Inez , la hermosa , la sin par ( the beautiful , the peerless ) , we would especially refer our readers . We have said that trie author bears his testimony to the degraded state of the Grandees of Spain . He describes them as , even in physical endowments , a pigmy , deteriorated race , with
intellectual powers and capabilities pretty much on the same scale ; with no remains of their ancient importance , except an inflated , puff-cheek opinion of their own dignity , and a rigid , high-starched attention to state and etiquette , which has a very ridiculous effect , and induces a careful avoidance of any alliances out of their own order , aa they p ick their way through families with marriageable daughters . They hold places in the court , but they have no political influence , and by their exclusion from the Chamber of JProceresy they seem reduced to a nullity— " a vox et prceterea nihil 9 a thing which men have heard of , but which no longer exists . " They are , with few exceptions , overwhelmed with debts and mortgages , and their vast possessions are lying waste . By far
the greater part of Spain is uncultivated , and the noble mansions throughout the country are becoming ruinous ; but , unlike the human owners , there is grandeur in their decay , and sense of old memories , and deep lament of soul for the high hopes that have become air , and the mighty things that have returned to indistinguishable dust , and are now in themselves as nothing .
" Not a few of the ancient family seats of the grandees are superb models of Gothic or Moorish architecture . Placed on the bold summit of some mountain ' brow , over some rocky pass or wooded defile , they command a wild , and rich , and heart-stirring prospect ; their time-struck battlements still rise proudly to the heavens , while their vaulted hails and tapestried chambers attest , on every side , the absence and neglect of
their lord . The spacious stables of the Andalusian war-horse , or farfamed barb of the desert , are crumbling to ruins , and now afford only a precarious shelter to the goats or asses of the wandering gitanos . A few thousand yards apart , perched on the topmost pinnacle of the ridge , the cUalaya rears its tall square tower—a trusty sentinel keeping watch and ward for Moor or Saracen , —
" ' grey and grief-worn aspect of old days . "—Vol . ii , p . 111 . Accurate and graphic descriptions , such as the foregoing , are of frequent recurrence in these admirable volumes . We may instance the first view of Madrid approached by the Bayonne road , when , after the eye has become wearied with the wild , sterile
aspect of the country , the domes and minarets , and high tapering ' Steeples of the capital " spring from the earth as at the touch of a magician ' s wand ; * and the view of the Prado at night The account of tne interior of the city conveys to the mind a most lively idea of its general appearance . We seem to see the whole with its striking ' peculiarities ;—the infinite variety of costume , foreign , native , military , and monastic ; the strange contiguity of splendour and
Untitled Article
532 Madrid in 1835 .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1836, page 532, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2661/page/8/
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