brogues: here the women with the hoods
and long plaited hair. To-morrow there will
be hill pilgrimage; and to-night much sour
wine will be drunk. There go the guns—
bang, bang. O, my poor ears! let's get out
of this.

SEVENTH SHAKE.

WHAT do you see? Don't be all day—
What do you see? I see a troop of stubborn-
looking men in knee-breeches and broad-
brimmed, slouching brigand hats. They wear
wide silk sashes, and the colours they most
affect seem to be red and blue. They look
as they wind up that snowy pass of the
Pyrenees, vigorous, brave, hardy, simple
men, but obstinate enough to realise the old
proverb against them, which says that they
knock nails into walls with their heads.
They hate the French and the Castillians;
and though slow to learn a new idea, never
forget it when it becomes an old one. It is a
wind-swept craggy rock-girt country is
Aragon. Its hills full of game, its hill
streams of trout, its deserts of gnawing
barrenness; in spite of the Ebro and
Saragossa, I had sooner be out of it. Eight
thousand feet high in the Aragon Pyrenees
there is perpetual snow. Land of the bear
and wild goat, of the wolf and eagle, again I
look at thy crags and glaciers. I hear the
shepherd's whistle, or the smuggler's song as
his loaded mules come feeling their way
down the crumbling path. Again I see thy
royal Maladita, the sky-pinnacled battlements
that divide two kingdoms, thy passes, thy
beds, thy torrents, thy valleys, thy basins,
thy amphitheatres of rock, thy dens of
guerillas and smugglers.

EIGHTH SHAKE.

I KNOW now, by the long red caps, jackets
hung over the shoulder, and long dark
breeches, that I am in harsh saturnine
Catalonia. I see by the large ugly women,
neither graceful as the Andalusian, or
sumptuously beautiful as the Valencians,
by their immense amethyst Moorish
earrings, supported by threads, by their tight
bodices, handkerchiefs and serge
mantillas. I know their rough, independent
manner. They are frugal, honest, brave,
and obstinate, but not courteous or lazy,
like the Castillian. Sailors and democrats
half of them; traders and smugglers
the other half,—rough and read. I see now
its wooded hills and snowy peaks; its
evergreen valleys and smugglers' roads; its plains
and harbours. Why that city on the sea
is surely Barcelona, city of nuts, and yonder
is Tarragona. What are those mountains?
Why Montserrat to be sure, rent as the
monks say, the night of the Crucifixion.
The throne of the Virgin as the Catalonian
thinks; a nest of hermitages and lies, where
you may hear the gun-fire from the next
fortress-tower, break through the intoned
monotony of the vesper-bell. Adieu to
Catalonia. The horses beat their feet for us at
the door.

NINTH SHAKE.

WE are in fertile, damp, melon-bearing
Valencia—the Moor's lost Paradise, the Cid's
country, the wet region of canals and rice
that sallow men dig and dung—and where the
mulberry stains everything purple. These
men you see in hempen sandals and footless
stockings, white linen drawers, gaudy jackets,
with open shirt-sleeves, plaids, and gay
sashes, are the muleteers of Spain and the
hackney-coachmen of Madrid. Observe their
lank black hair bound with a silk handkerchief!
As for these women who, at Madrid,
would be selling iced drinks in the streets,
and here are washing in the doorways, they
have their rolls of hair pierced with huge silver
pins, big as daggers, and wear silver gilt combs
with the Virgin's image upon them. Those
ornaments and little silver idol-saints that
they wear are talismans against the Evil
Eye. I cannot say much for the Valencians;
they are sullen, cruel, cunning, and revengeful;
gay, yet treacherous; plausible, but
suspicious. Region of balmy air and tropical
fertility, with thy low sandy shore, from which
the Mediterranean shrinks away like a
wearied lover, with thy watch-towers, and thy
perpetual carob-trees, thy water-wheels
strung with jars, and thy vine-dressers and
silk-winders. Shake!

TENTH SHAKE.

IN vain I shake the glass, for smuggling
Ronda, still I look through, and find
Andalusia. Here is real Spain again. Yes, there
is the brown Guadalquivir, and the tower of
Seville, the desert banks, the purple
mountains, the orange grove, the bull-ring, the
sugar-canes, the land of the gay, buzzing,
witty, strutting Andalusian in his velvet
jacket, knee-breeches, turban cap, tags, and
tassels, his coloured sash, and frilled shirt,
land of the bolero and the castanet, of Moorish
rivers, and wild goats. Like all Spain, a land
of contrasts; of beggars in blankets cowering
at church doors, and of bull-fighters, gay in
opera silks, sweeping by, the very kings of the
causeway, of black- eyed beauties, hidden in
lace mantillas, and of half-naked gipsy-
women fighting with knives for half a prickly
pear. This is the hot land of the melon-eater,
mule-driver, and water-seller, the land of
priests and asses (I mean mules), of desert and
ruin, of orange grove and maize field, of aloe
hedges, and prickly pear walks.

Now once more I shake the kaleidoscope,
and to my horror, whether my brain is
affected or my eyes tired, I see nothing but a
rubbish heap of broken glass—fragments of
yellow, blues and reds, of purples, browns,
and red oranges, of greens &c. No trees now;
no hills, no shape.

"Why, the fact is, old fellow," says my