ventures and perils with a heroism of too elevated a kind to be called romantic, the heroism of piety, and maintaining every where an immaculate character; on returning home, (in the earlier part of the seventeenth century,) he was almost compelled into important public employments, made a brilliant entrance in the House of Commons, waging ardent and successful war on the public delinquents that in those times, so unlike the present, infested that house; and after he had done this, and when there was plenty more such work for him to do, he quitted public life, at little more than the age of thirty, in obedience to a religious fancy he had long entertained, and formed of his family and relations a sort of little half-popish convent, in which he passed the remainder of his life.

XIX.

SPAIN.

Chronicle of the Cid. From the Spanish. By ROBERT SOUTHEY.

DURING the seven centuries that have elapsed since the death of the Cid, there has probably never been a time, till within the last seven months, when a large volume of half legendary history of his adventures would have had any great chance of obtaining much attention in England. Just now is the time, or rather four or five months since was the time, for calling some of the chiefs of the ancient Spanish chivalry from their long slumber, in order to assist us to extend backward into former ages our interest in the heroic character of that nation; a nation in which we had begun to hope that almost every nobleman and every peasant was going to perform such exploits as those of the Cid, in a more righteous cause than almost any in which that hero had the fortune to display his valour. We are never content to confine our admiration to the present spirit and actions of an individual, or of a people, that has become a favourite with us, if we can find or fancy any thing deserving to be admired, in the retrospect of its earlier times. Besides, when a people is entering on a grand and most perilous enterprise, in which it is evident that any thing less than the most heroic spirit must fail, the martial names and achievements of its ancestors have a certain influence, a greater, indeed, than is warranted by the history of national character, on our hopes of its success. When summoned to vindicate the national cause, the men surely will not hide themselves from danger among the very monuments of their heroic progenitors; they

cannot be content to read and recite the stories of invincible champions, of their own names, and, by their nativity, reflecting lustre on their own villages and towns, and yet see these towns and villages commanded and plundered by bands of for

eign invaders; they cannot endure to see their country and themselves in a state to make them abhor the recollection that such renowned heroes were their forefathers ;-is it possible that the Spaniards of the present day, recalling to mind the gallant hostility which once expelled the Moors, can quietly sink down under the domination of the modern Saracens ? It has occurred to our thoughts numberless times, while going through this volume, what an intolerable place their country would soon become, to the usurping enemy, if the martial spirit which blazed all over it in the eleventh century could be now re-kindled; and what a dreadful impression would be made on the Gallic squadrons by even a very small army of such men as this Rodrigo Diaz, and those that fought by his side. The very same reflections have occurred, no doubt, to multitudes of the Spanish nation, within the last few months: but, notwithstanding all such reflections, and the momentary ardour they may in some instances possibly have excited, it would appear that one more proof remained to be given, that, in these times, the tombs, the histories, and the splendid fables of valiant ancestors have lost all their power against a daring invader.

As all our readers, as well as ourselves, talk less or more every day of the events in Spain, which have lately awakened the strongest interest throughout the whole civilized world, it will, perhaps, be permitted us to take this occasion of suggesting a few considerations relative to those events, and to the manner in which they have been viewed and celebrated in this country.

With regard to the manner in which those events have been beheld and discussed, it is painful to us, as believers in Christianity, to have to observe, that it may be doubted whether there has ever been a grand affair, involving a most momentous crisis, and creating a profound and universal solicitude, which was contemplated in this country with any thing so much like a general consent to forget all religious considerations. The anxiety which we have fully shared with all around us, for the success of the Spanish people, could not prevent us from sometimes thoughtfully observing in what terms anxiety, speculation, or triumph, were expressed by veteran statesmen, young political philosophers, many divines, the whole tribe almost of journalists, and a very large proportion of the mass of the people; and it has been exceedingly striking to perceive the general willingness to exempt the Governor of the world

from all exercise of care or interference. We really believe we have hardly met with one political or military calculation on the powers and probabilities in this great commotion, in which the fact of an Almighty Providence, if any accident could have suggested it to the calculator's thoughts, would have been of half as much importance in his account, as one regiment of soldiers more or less, or one cargo of ammunition. But in general, the thought seems not to have occurred at all; the plans, the reasonings, the auguries, the exultation, and the fears, have all been entertained and revolved, under an entire failure to recollect that an invisible Being has ever decided the course and events of human affairs. And the benefit of this exclusion of every thought relating to that Being has been very great, to the confident class of speculators, as it has simplified their calculations; the interference of an invisible Power, is a thing so independent and mysterious, that it is very difficult to adjust its place and value among the elements of the calculation; but let the whole matter be reduced to a plain account of so many men in arms against so many, and we go directly to the consequence without hesitation.

We could not deem it a favourable omen, when we observed the general, and we think unequalled, prevalence, in this Christian country, of so light an estimate of the dependence of human affairs on the Supreme Governor. Another very prominent circumstance, has been the apparent renunciation of all concern about the stability or subversion of the power of the Romish church. In times that are past, yet not so long past but we ourselves can remember them, this most impious, tyrannic, and cruel power was regarded as one of the most pernicious and hateful things on the face of the whole earth; and its grand instrument, the inquisition, was con sidered as precisely the utmost reach of diabolical contrivance and malignity. English protestants could not hear the words popery and inquisition, without instantly thinking of crowds of racked, or burning, or bleeding martyrs; of numerous other pious and holy men perishing in dungeons and deserts; of soldiers, stimulated by priests to merit heaven by absolutely wantoning in the torments and death of women and children; of midnight spies, of domestics exhorted and threatened into informers, of the general interdiction of divine knowledge by severe punishments for reading the bible, of an infinite swarm of lazy, bigoted, and vicious ecclesiastics, of the worship of

saints and of images, and of a train of follies and impieties, in doctrine and ceremony, far too numerous to be named. Nothing inspired greater delight than any symptoms of the approaching fall of this most execrable power; our anticipations of the prosperity or decline of any of the political states of Europe depended very much, perhaps more than on any other thing whatever, on the degree in which they respectively assisted or opposed that impious and cruel hierarchy: while many devout and learned writers, and a multitude of their readers, rejoiced to discern any coincidence between passing events and the prophecies of the fall of antichrist. In looking round on the states that support this enormous usurpation on the liberty, the reason, and the conscience of mankind, it was notorious that Spain and Portugal were the most faithful subjects of the slavery and abettors of the tyranny. When the recent movement in Spain became so extensive as apparently to promise to raise the whole effective population in arms, we began to entertain a most earnest sentiment, something between the desponding desire and the hope, that now, at last, not only a repelling boundary, much more lofty and impervious than the Pyrenees, would be raised against the irruptions, on one side, at least, of the grand tyrant of Europe, but also that, in some way or other, the strongest hold of popery would be eventually shaken into ruins. It was not to be expected that any direct measures, for reducing the inveterate ascendency of the popish establishment, would form a part of the first revolutionary proceedings. But, as we trusted that all the genius and knowledge in the country would be called forth by the great occasion, and that the most able, enlightened, and liberal men would soon come to occupy the vacated powers of government, we flattered ourselves they would be too wise, as statesmen, to be bigoted as catholics. We presumed they could not but feel that the freedom which deserved to be sought at the expense of a prolonged and direful conflict with the greatest military power the world ever saw, would remain imperfect, dishonoured, and in a great measure useless, unless something were at least gradually effected, for reducing that despotism of superstition, which would else be a fatal obstacle to all grand schemes of national improvement. We thought that the great commotion, which would excite throughout the whole nation twenty times more bold thought and strong passion, than had prevailed in it at any one period for centuries past, would give