Navigation del Tajo_,’ or, ‘Memoir on the Navigation of the Tagus,’ Madrid, 1829, reads like the blue book of one discovering the source of the Nile, so desert-like are the unpeopled, uncultivated districts between Toledo and Abrantes. Ferd. VII. thereupon issued an approving _paper_ decree, and so there the thing ended, although Cabanas had engaged with Messrs. Wallis and Mason for the machinery, &c. Recently the project has been renewed by Señor Bermudez de Castro, an intelligent gentleman, who, from long residence in England, has imbibed the schemes and energy of the foreigner. _Verémos!_ “we shall see;” for hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper, says Bacon; and in Spain things are begun late in the day, and never finished; so at least says the proverb:--_En España se empieza tarde, y se acaba nunca_. [Sidenote: DIVISION INTO PROVINCES.] CHAPTER IV. Divisions into Provinces--Ancient Demarcations--Modern Departments--Population--Revenue--Spanish Stocks. In the divisions of the Peninsula which are effected by mountains, rivers, and climate, a leading principle is to be traced throughout, for it is laid down by the unerring hand of nature. The artificial, political, and conventional arrangement into kingdoms and provinces is entirely the work of accident and absence of design. These provincial divisions were formed by the gradual union of many smaller and previously independent portions, which have been taken into Spain as a whole, just as our inconvenient counties constitute the kingdom of England; for the inconveniences of these results of the ebb and flow of the different tides in the affairs of man’s dominion--these boundaries not fixed by the lines and rules of theodolite-armed land surveyors, use had provided remedies, and long habit had reconciled the inhabitants to divisions which suited them better than any new arrangement, however scientifically calculated, according to statistical and geographical principles. The French, during their intrusive rule, were horrified at this “chaos administratif,” this apparent irregularity, and introduced their own system of _départements_, by which districts were neatly squared out and people re-arranged, as if Spain were a chess-board and Spaniards mere pawns--_peones_, or footmen, which this people, calling itself one of _caballeros_, that is, riders on horses _par excellence_, assuredly is not: nor, indeed, in this paradise of the church militant, can the moves of any Spanish bishop or knight be calculated on with mathematical certainty, since they seldom will take the steps to-morrow which they did yesterday. [Sidenote: PROVINCES.]