It must be also admitted that the respectability and character of many a Spaniard is liable to be misunderstood, when he sets forth on any of his travels, except in a public wheel conveyance; as we said in our ninth chapter, he assumes the national costume of the road, and leaves his wife and long-tailed coat behind him. Now as most Spaniards are muffled up and clad after the approved melodrame fashion of robbers, they may be mistaken for them in reality; indeed they are generally sallow, have fierce black eyes, uncombed hair, and on these occasions neglect the daily use of towels and razors; a long beard gives, and not in Spain alone, a ferocious ruffian-like look, which is not diminished when gun and knife are added to match faces à la Brutus. Again, these worthies thus equipped, have sometimes a trick of staring rather fixedly from under their slouched hat at the passing stranger, whose, to them, outlandish costume excites curiosity and suspicion; naturally therefore some difficulty does exist in distinguishing the merino from the wolf, when both are disguised in the same clothing--a _zamarra_ sheepskin to wit. A private Spanish gentleman, who, in his native town, would be the model of a peaceable and inoffensive burgess, or a respectable haberdasher, has, when on his commercial tour, altogether the appearance of the Bravo of Venice, and such-like heroes, by whom children are frightened at a minor theatre. In consequence of the difficulty of outliving what has been learnt in the nursery, many of our countrymen have, with the best intentions, set down the bulk of the population of the Peninsula as one gang of robbers--they have exaggerated their numbers like Falstaff’s men of buckram; the said imagined Rinaldo Rinaldinis being probably in a still greater state of alarm from having on their part taken our said countrymen for robbers, and this mutual misunderstanding continues, until both explain their slight mistake of each other’s character and intention. Although we never fell into the error of thus mistaking Spanish peaceable traders for privateers and men-of-war, yet that injustice has been done by them to us; possibly this compliment may have been paid to our careful observation of the bearing and garb of their great Rob Roy himself and in his own country, which, to one about to undertake, in those days, long and solitary rides over the Peninsula, was an unspeakable advantage.