In Spain whenever and wherever the siren sounds are heard, a party is forthwith got up of all ages and sexes, who are attracted by the tinkling like swarming bees. The guitar is part and parcel of the Spaniard and his ballads; he slings it across his shoulder with a ribbon, as was depicted on the tombs of Egypt four thousand years ago. The performers seldom are very scientific musicians; they content themselves with striking the chords, sweeping the whole hand over the strings, or flourishing, and tapping the board with the thumb, at which they are very expert. Occasionally in the towns there is some one who has attained more power over this ungrateful instrument; but the attempt is a failure. The guitar responds coldly to Italian words and elaborate melody, which never come home to Spanish ears or hearts; for, like the lyre of Anacreon, however often he might change the strings, love, sweet love, is its only theme. The multitude suit the tune to the song, both of which are frequently extemporaneous. They lisp in numbers, not to say verse; but their splendid idiom lends itself to a prodigality of words, whether prose or poetry; nor are either very difficult, where common sense is no necessary ingredient in the composition; accordingly the language comes in aid to the fertile mother-wit of the natives; rhymes are dispensed with at pleasure, or mixed according to caprice with assonants which consist of the mere recurrence of the same vowels, without reference to that of consonants, and even these, which poorly fill a foreign ear, are not always observed; a change in intonation, or a few thumps more or less on the board, do the work, supersede all difficulties, and constitute a rude prosody, and lead to music just as gestures do to dancing and to ballads,--“_que se canta ballando_;” and which, when heard, reciprocally inspire a Saint Vitus’s desire to snap fingers and kick heels, as all will admit in whose ears the _habas verdes_ of Leon, or the _cachuca_ of Cadiz, yet ring. [Sidenote: THE LADIES SINGING.] The words destined to set all this capering in motion are not written for cold British critics. Like sermons, they are delivered orally, and are never subjected to the disenchanting ordeal of type: and even such as may be professedly serious and not saltatory are listened to by those who come attuned to the hearing vein--who anticipate and re-echo the subject--who are operated on by the contagious bias. Thus a fascinated audience of otherwise sensible Britons tolerates the positive presence of nonsense at an opera-- “Where rhyme with reason does dispense, And sound has right to govern sense.”