good niggers go, was by no means a
disreputable old "chattel." The livelier songs
were nothing worse than simply comic, and not
half so vulgar as the ditties which divided
the favour of the town some years ago. The
Ohio Boatman, who dances all night, and goes
home with the pretty girls in the morning, is
a right good fellow, only with less sentiment
and vastly more fun in him than his Canadian
brother, who used to sing nightly to our
fathers of how the rapids were won and
the danger was passed. The Buffalo Girls
who are incited to come out to-night, are
no whit worse than Moore's lady who desired
to take advantage of the young May Moon
which is beaming love, or than Lilian, who
is awakened at untimely hours, and bidden
to be lovingly cognisant of the fact. What a
marked peculiarity about lovers in books and
poems it is, that they have the most
extraordinary ideas of time, and never trouble
themselves with proprieties in hours, or the
natural divisions of the day and night! It is
always full-moon with them, and a perpetual
summer, rendering night walks in muslin
dresses practicable to a degree unheard of
in the bills of health. The Buffalo Girls
are of this kind: but then the summers of
Ole Virginny have nights of which we know
nothing.

The negro melodies are childish,
certainly:  they belong to a childish race, and
naturally follow the national bent; if, indeed,
we may say that a race of slaves has
anything national at all about it! But, although
they show very little intellectual culture,
they are never coarse nor indelicate, and
have a natural and unaffected tone, which I
presume contains the secret of their success.
The world is so overlaid with cant in various
forms, that anything genuine stands out with
double force and lustre.

THE SPAIN OF CERVANTES AND
THE SPAIN OF GIL BLAS.

THERE is a Castilian proverb full of Iberian
humility, declaring that when you have said
"Spain " you have said everything; that
monosyllable, Spain, including all others
within its periphery. I can scarcely go so
far as this; although I think that, when
you have said Spain, you have said also, in
understood brackets— nuts, oranges,
chestnuts, garlic, pride, bull-fights, and superstition.

To the general mind, Spain is a matter of
mountains and orange-trees, castanets, dancing,
veils, black lace fans, and those filigreed
laced jackets blazoned on plum-boxes, which
are said to be the work of the Spanish Royal
Academicians who contribute all sorts of
clever illustrations to promote the sale of
figs. Add to this, a scrap of Cervantes, a
scene from Gil Blas, some Gipsies by Murillo,
a Battle or two, a few Moors, Pedro the
Cruel, the Black Prince, Columbus, Philip
and the Armada, a Bull Fight, a good deal
of cigar-smoke, and you have the popular
English notion of Spanish associations.

The popular mind has always some way of
reducing nations, to a type. To some all
Italy is represented by a brigand in cobalt
breeches and crimson cross garters, leaning
pensively on his musket under a Salvator
Rosa tree that has been split up for firewood
by the lightning. To others, the Russian is
always in a sledge being chased into Moscow
by wolves. As children, we got hold of these
types from juvenile books, and cannot get
rid of them (if our minds are not elastic)
till we drive off the spectres by reading, travel,
or an enlarged habit of thought. Every one,
in fact, has some unclaimed forest or waste
in his head which he has from time to time
to clear, plough, and restore to cultivation
and daylight. Some of us, unfortunately,
never drain our brain-swamps all our lives
long, and we pay for it on the drop or on
the hulks. Some of us partially cultivate,
and then leave the crop to come up as it likes.
These are prejudiced men: our mental
petrifactions, our Tories, our finality men,
our fogies and our bores.

Now, since that evening that Doctor Johnson
in a tremendous voice, and giving a shake
of self-conviction to his frizzled and scorched
wig, told that intolerable faithful coxcomb,
Boswell, that Spain should be visited, Spain
has been visited. It has been so Murrayed
and Forded and inspected, that there is no
reason why reading and thinking Englishmen
should not know all they want to know about
Spain from its highest alp to its deepest river.
There is no reason that we should not toss
for ever into the dust-hole of oblivion that
spectre Spaniard, with ready knife and black
brows, who has been so long dancing the
Fandango in the popular mind; for be sure
that men as brave and wise, and constant and
faithful, and pure-hearted as any in England,
may be found on the Asturian hills and on the
Castilian plains. All apples came originally
from the bitter crab; and, because we are at
present the golden pippins of the world, we
have no right to crow over the winter
russets or the leather jackets of that unfortunate
orchard over the blue water.

It is true that Spain had a short reign
of it. No empire ever fell to pieces so
quickly, or was more splendid a luminary
while it shone the very centre of the
spheres. In history it is the old story of
the hare and tortoise, the flower and the
oak-tree. It is the same all through the
world slow to grow, long to last; quick
to grow, quick to pass. But then what a
sun-burst of mind and body it was! Columbus
to find out half the world that had been
playing hide and seek with us for thousands
of years. Charles the Fifth, to reign over half
the globe, coming like a man always rich.
Cervantes to make the world laugh till the
last day dawns. Don John to crush the Turks