MR. GALLENGA'S IBERIAN REMINISCENCES.* OF Mr. Gallenga's latest work it
is no praise to say that it is eminently readable. His style, pointed, incisive, attractive, always compels interest; rapid and fluent, he carries the reader with him, in the briefest time and without a jar, over an immense and varied area of thought and observation. He is in short, in his books as out of them, a "special correspondent" of the best type, a dexterous master of language, and a keenly appreciative observer of men and things, especially of men. But the art of the "special correspondent" has its dangers.
• Iberian Reminiscences. Fifteen Years' Travelling Impressions of Spain and Portugal. By A. Gallenga. 2 vols. Chapman and HalL 1883.
He addresses the multitude which prefers to have the surface of its intellect tickled, rather than the depths stirred. Hence he falls into a brilliant superficiality of manner, which hurries the reader along, and often causes him to miss mach of what is permanently valuable under the charm of a swift and smooth perusal. These Iberian Reminiscences must be read twice, or much of their substance will remain unrecognised; a little weightiness infused into the book would have rendered the labour avoidable.
As a factor in European politics, Spain rather is to be, than is. Politically, though not geographically, she lies between France and Italy, and in spite of the fact that she has twice been overran by the French during the resent century, she is much snore French than Italian in her sympathies. In her social organisation and in her domestic policy, on the other hand, she rather resembles Italy. Madrid, like Rome, is a capital in name rather than in reality ;, in both countries the middle- class is scanty in numbers and weak in influence, and the division and instability of political parties—a novel and probably transitory phenomenon north of the Pyrenees —seriously hinder the development of the national resources and the affirmation of the national unity. The differentia of Spanish politics lies in the curious part played by the army, on the inner histikg and condition of which fuller information than Mr. Gallenga has seen fit to afford would have been welcome. Whatever else may be badly managed in Spain, the army, under every administration, has been maintained at a high pitch of serviceable excellence, and one cannot but regret that so fine an instrument should have become degraded to a mere tool in the hands of a succession of military cliques. An oligarchy of officers, by no means numerous, have hitherto held the destinies of the country in their hands. Prim, the most enterprising and successful of these military adventurers, is characterised by Mr. Gallenga, who knew him well, was an eye- witness of the revolution effected by him, and more than once expresses the heartiest admiration of the "soldier, patriot, and conspirator," as no steadier in his party politics and no less un- scrupulous than the generality of his countrymen. At the Bridge of Alcolea, the portion of the army that favoured his cause met with a determined resistance from the regiments com- manded by the Marquis Novaliches, who lost his life in the en- counter. Many of the men who achieved distinction in the Carlist war had themselves been ardent Carlists. Facts like these—and the present volumes are full of similar ones—show abundantly the utter want of political principle that has marked the various revolutions which the last half-century has witnessed in Spain. The people stand by passive, while the army plays at politics, under the manipulation of ambitious generals and officers greedy of unmerited promotion. What is the secret of the apparent permanence of such a state of things in a European country in the last quarter of the nineteenth century ? Why should the people, decade after decade, submit to the rule of the army, why should the army consent to be led hither and thither, to the sole profit of undisguised adventurers ? Nothing of the kind has taken place in Italy, where provincialism a score of years ago was as well marked as it ever has been in Spain. To questions such as these, Mr. Gallenga's volumes give no direct answer; a partial one will, perhaps, be found in the circumstance that the army is the sole institution in Spain that has maintained something of the prestige it possessed in the days of Philip IL, and has thus concentrated in itself what public sentiment con- tinued to exist in the country after its virtual withdrawal from the arena of European politics in the course of the seventeenth century.
Mr. Gallenga's first visit to Spain was made in 1865, and from that year up to 1879 he travelled, at frequent intervals, through the length and breadth of the country, principally in the capacity of correspondent for the Times. His book is neither a guide, nor a history, nor a political treatise, but it has some- thing of all three. His descriptions are brief, but picturesque, especially of such old-world cities as Toledo, Avila, Cordova, or Granada, the mediteval gloom or Moorish fantasticalness of which are reproduced with equal vigour and truth by his lively and versatile pen. Nor is he less at home in modern Madrid, that ugliest of European capitals, built in the centre of an arid plateau, some 2,400 feet above the level of the sea, by Philip II., on the site of a hunting-box of Charles V. Here the Spain of the present century finds its most concentrated expression. Preachified externally, it is still utterly Spanish at heart. The mantilla is disappearing from the streets, but the bull-fights, the Church pageants, the religious shows remain, and the various revolutions of which the city has been the scene have not diminished by a single dress the wardrobe of the T7ryen de Atocha. But the reader will turn from the descriptions of the country to the descriptions of the people. Mr. Gallenga's "Reminiscences "are less of Spain than of the Spaniards, whom he has evidently closely studied, and learned to like, despite his contempt for their politics and politicians. "In Ispagua non v'e gente bassa," he quotes generously from a comedy of Goldoni, and the saying is as true now as it was when Goldoni wrote. They are fickle, idle, dirty, revengeful, treacherous, given to trivialities rather than frivolities, but they are rarely mean or ignoble in deed or sentiment. Their revolutions have not been stained by the furious ferocities of their northera neighbours, by plunder, or by iconoclasm. Warmheartedness is not a characteristic of southern races, who live but little in themselves ; but the main defect of the Spaniards lies in their aversion from all middle ways. They are by turns cold and hot, their faculties dulled by chilly indifference or warped by passion ; they are never warm. In addition, and herein is to be found their specific difference, they are the prey of a peculiar pride, that is haughty, but not insolent. All Europe works for them ; they stand by proudly while Frenchmen do their building, and Englishmen construct their waterworks or dig their mines, pocketing enormous profits. They have hardly any literature,—Fernan Caballero was a German ; their novels and plays are taken from the French, their science is all brought across the seas or over the Pyrenees.
Their ethnology is as unparalleled as their history. Spain is the only European country that ever came under Arab domina- tion. The Spaniards are the only race in whose veins flows the mingled blood of Teuton and Arab ; the conquerors from the north in this outlying peninsula have fused with the conquerors from the south into a unique people, pre- serving the doggedness of the one and the nobility of the other. Alone of all Western peoples they have hardly a dash of the Celt in their composition (for the Iberians were in all probability Basques), hence their lack of the lightness of the Italians and of the gaiety of the French. To read Mr. Gallenga's volumes is to make a tour, if not in Spain, among Spaniards ;. and one rises from their perusal with the conviction that we have here a noble people that has remained haughtily dumb under three centuries of misgovernment by successive cliques of ambitious priests, military schemers, and political doctrinaires. Mr. Gallenga knows the Portuguese almost as well as the Spaniards, and draws a most interesting and instructive con- trast between the two peoples, "tied back to back " for so many centuries, without ever, save for a brief space (1580-1640) having been brought into union. Had Philip II. made Lisbon his capital, instead of Madrid, the Iberian dream might have been realised three hundred years ago, but as far as any proximate future is concerned the dream is likely to remain one.
Next to the account given of the career of Prim, the mystery of whose tragic end has not yet been cleared up, the description of the Alfonsist monarchy is the most valuable portion of the book. The picture of Court life at La Granja is especially lifelike and instructive. As an interesting detail, we quote the numbers of the Spanish nobility. "There are now," says Mr. Gallenga, " 89 dukes all grandees of the first rank, 831 marquises, 632 counts, 9-2 viscounts, and 25 barons, making altogether a host of 1,659 heads of noble families." Of these peerages many are of "democratic creation. Room for some 700 of this noble army is made among the major-domos, the gentiles hombres de cam p boca, de camera, de entrada, &c., but many can be little more than titled paupers. The army is as abundantly officered as the nation is provided with noblemen. 100,000 men are commanded by eight captain- generals (field marshals), 86 lieutenant-generals, 127 generals of division, 336 brigadier-generals, and 20,000 officers. No wonder the comparative expense is very greatly in excess of that of the Italian army. We are rather surprised that so little is said concerning Castelar and the party he leads. There are signs that the par- ticular republicanism he affects is likely to resume the prominent position it occupied some years ago. Anyhow, doctrinaire though be be, and therefore hateful to a Times correspondent, he is still one of Spain's foremost politicians, and merits some- thing more than the passing mention he gets in these "Iberian Reminiscences."
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