[193] For Paravicino and his school, see Sedano, (Parnaso Español, Tom. V. p. xlviii.,) Baena, (Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. p. 389,) and Antonio, (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 612,) who speaks as if he had often heard Paravicino’s eloquence, and witnessed its effects. _E contra_ is Figueroa, who, in his “Pasagero,” (1617, Alivio IV.,) is severe upon the preachers and audiences of Madrid. The fact, however, that Capmany, in his five important volumes devoted to Spanish eloquence, has been able to find nothing in the seventeenth century, either in the way of forensic orations or popular pulpit eloquence, with which to fill his pages, but is obliged to resort to the eloquent prose of history and philosophy, of ethics and religious asceticism, tells at once, in a way not to be mistaken, the tale of the deficiencies in Castilian eloquence, as the word _eloquence_ is understood in English. * * * * * There is little in Spanish epistolary correspondence that requires notice as a portion of the elegant literature of the country. The heartiness of a simpler age gives, indeed, a charm to such letters as those which claim to have been written by Cibdareal, and in a less degree to those of Pulgar and Diego de Valera. Later, the despatches of Columbus, in which he made known to the world his vast discoveries, are occasionally marked by the fervor of an enthusiasm inspired by his great subject; and those of his queen and patron, though few in number and less interesting, are quite as characteristic and quite as true-hearted. But, with the stately court brought from the North by Charles the Fifth, all this was changed. Added forms, and more than the old national gravity, passed into the intercourse of social life, and infected the style of the commonest correspondence. Genial familiarity disappeared from the letters of friends, and even private affections and feelings were either seldom expressed, or were so covered up as to be with difficulty recognized. Thus, what was most valued in this department at the time, and for a century afterwards, were Guevara’s “Golden Epistles,” which are only formal dissertations, and the “Epistles” of Avila, which are sermons in disguise, that moved the hearts of his countrymen because they were such earnest exhortations to a religious life.[194]