For all of these reasons the work of condensation by Professor Chapman constitutes an important service in itself for the English-speaking public, for it gives in one volume the most substantial features of our history from primitive times to the present moment. Furthermore, there are chapters in his work which belong entirely to him: XXXII, XXXIX, and XL. The reason for departing from my text in Chapter XXXII is given by Professor Chapman in the Preface. As for the other two he was under the unavoidable necessity of constructing them himself. His, for me, very flattering method of procedure, possible down to the year 1808, if indeed it might find a basis for continuation in a chapter of mine in the _Cambridge modern history_ (v. X), in my lectures on the history of Spain in the nineteenth century (given at the Ateneo of Madrid, some years ago), in the little manual of the _Historia de la civilización española_ (History of Spanish civilization) which goes to the year 1898, and even in the second part of a recent work, _España y el programa americanista_ (Spain and the Americanist program), published at Madrid in 1917, nevertheless could not avail itself of a single text, a continuous, systematized account, comprehensive of all the aspects of our national life as in the case of the periods prior to 1808. Moreover, it is better that the chapters referring to the nineteenth century and the present time should be written by a foreign pen, whose master in this instance, as a result of his having lived in Spain, is able to contribute that personal impression of which I have spoken before, an element which if it is at times deceiving in part, through the influence of a too local or regional point of view, is always worth more than that understanding which proceeds only from erudite sources.