The accomplishments brought back by our grandfathers from the Continent to grace the drawing-rooms of May Fair, or enliven the solitudes of Yorkshire, were a favourite subject for satirists, some "sixty years since." Admitting the descriptions to be correct, it must be remembered that the grand tour had become at once monotonous and deleterious,--from Calais to Paris, from Paris to Geneva, from Geneva to Milan, from Milan to Florence, thence to Rome, and thence to Naples, the English "my lord," with his bear-leader, was conducted with regularity, if not with speed; and the same course of sights and society was prescribed for, and taken by, generation after generation of Oxonians and Cantabs. Then, again, the Middle Ages, with their countless graceful vestiges, their magnificent architecture, which even archaic Evelyn thought and called "barbarous," their chivalrous customs, religious observances, rude yet picturesque arts, and fanciful literature, were literally blotted out from the note-book of the English tourist. Whatever was classical or modern, that was worthy of regard; but whatever belonged to "Europe's middle night," _that_ the descendants of Saxon thanes or Norman knights disdained even to look at. Even had there been no Pyrenees to cross, or no Bay of Biscay to encounter, so Gothic a country as Spain was not likely to attract to its dusky sierras, frequent monasteries, and mediæval towns, the fine gentlemen and Mohawks of those enlightened days; nor need we be surprised that the natural beauties of that romantic land--its weird mountains, primæval forests, and fertile plains, fragrant with orange groves, and bright with flowers of every hue, unknown to English gardens--remained unexplored by the countrymen of Gray and Goldsmith, who have put on record their marked disapprobation of Nature in her wildest and most sublime mood. Thus, then, it was that, with rare exceptions, the pleasant land of Spain was a sealed book to Englishmen, until the Great Captain rivalled and eclipsed the feats and triumphs of the Black Prince in every province of the Peninsula, and enabled guardsmen and hussars to admire the treasures of Spanish art in many a church and convent unspoiled by French rapacity. Nor may we deny our obligations to Gallic plunderers. Many a noble picture that now delights the eyes of thousands, exalts and purifies the taste of youthful painters, and sends, on the purple wings of European fame, the name of its Castilian, or Valencian, or Andalusian creator down the stream of time, but for Soult or Sebastiani, might still have continued to waste its sweetness on desert air. Thenceforward, in spite of brigands and captain-generals, rival constitutions and contending princes, have adventurous Englishmen been found to delight in rambling, like Inglis, in the footsteps of Don Quixote,--emulating the deeds of Peterborough, like Ranelagh and Henningsen, or throwing themselves