The principal defects of Spanish servants and of the lower classes of Spaniards are much the same, and faults of race. As a mass, they are apt to indulge in habits of procrastination, waste, improvidence, and untidiness. They are unmechanical and obstinate, easily beaten by difficulties, which their first feeling is to raise, and their next to succumb to; they give the thing up at once. They have no idea indeed of grappling with anything that requires much trouble, or of doing anything as it ought to be done, or even of doing the same thing in the same way--accident and the impulse of the moment set them going. They are very unmechanical, obstinate, and prejudiced; ignorant of their own ignorance and incurious as Orientals; partly from pride, self-opinion, and idleness, they seldom will ask questions for information from others, which implies an inferiority of knowledge, and still more seldom will take an answer, unless it be such a one as they desire; their own wishes, opinions, and wants are their guides, and self the centre of their gravity, not those of their employers. As a Spaniard’s _yes_, when you beg a favour, generally means _no_, so they cannot or will not understand that your _no_ is really a negative when they come petitioning to be idle; at the same time a great change for the better comes over them when they are taken out of the city on a rambling tour. The nomad life excites them into active serviceable fellows; in fact the uncertain harum-scarum nomad existence is exactly what suits these descendants of the Arab; they cannot bear the steady sustained routine of a well-managed household; they abhor confinement; hence the difficulty of getting Spaniards to garrison fortresses or to man ships of war, from whence there is no escape.