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Or vous aurez loisir Cheminant en Espagne Bien que maintes montagnes Il vous faudra monter. _Pilgrims’ Song._
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMXII.
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
This is rather a collection of stray notes on Spain than a connected study--of notes from many pleasant hours of Spanish literature and travel, but perhaps of too individual an interest to appear without some apology. No reference will be found to those great social and political problems which disturb Spanish life. To fill the idler moments of a Spanish holiday, and possibly to help the reader to feel that “parfum du terroir” which pervades Spain, is the unambitious object of these pages. Better still, if he turns from them in dissatisfaction to authoritative writers on Spanish life and letters, and to the magic-land of Spanish literature itself. For permission to reprint some of these short essays in slightly altered form the author has to thank the Editors of the _Morning Post_, the _Outlook_, and the _Queen_.
It is not easy in a few words to account for the strange Oriental spell that Spain has exercised over many minds nor to explain the potency of its attraction. For indeed the great Peninsula possesses a special spice and flavour. It has not the immemorial culture of Italy, nor the pleasant smiling landscapes of France with her green meadows and crystal streams. The old Iberia, that _dura tellus_, has a peculiar raciness. Its colour is often harsh and crude; many of its districts are barren and discomfortable. The bleak and rocky uplands and the ragged sierra ridges cut the country into sharp divisions and cause it to be thinly and variously populated. On those uplands the breath of the wind is often icy and the sun strikes with a biting force. Great parched and desolate plains extend treeless and unprotected two thousand feet above the sea. The villages at distant intervals are of the colour of the soil, and scarcely to be distinguished from a mass of yellow-brown rocks. Morning and evening a string of mules may be seen outlined on the horizon, for the peasants set out in bands to till their distant fields; or a shepherd with his flock of sheep, or goats, relieves the strange monotony of this dust-laden windy desert. Nothing could be sadder or less harmonious than the peasants’ harsh and strident singing, the very peculiarity of which has, however, a piquancy and charm. Hard too is their language, with its clean gutturals, far rougher and manlier than the musical sister-tongue of Italy. All points to a like conclusion, that this is no country of comfort and soft languorous delight, but of a quaint and forcible originality, where the most jaded mind may be braced and inspirited and find a fresher and more stirring life.