Nor, I trust, will such a people--still proud and faithful in its less favored masses, if not in those portions whose names dimly shadow forth the glory they have inherited--fail to create a literature appropriate to a character in its nature so poetical. The old ballads will not indeed return; for the feelings that produced them are with by-gone things. The old drama will not be revived;--society, even in Spain, would not now endure its excesses. The old chroniclers themselves, if they should come back, would find no miracles of valor or superstition to record, and no credulity fond enough to believe them. Their poets will not again be monks and soldiers, as they were in the days when the influences of the old religious wars and hatreds gave both their brightest and darkest colors to the elements of social life; for the civilization that struck its roots into that soil has died out for want of nourishment. But the Spanish people--that old Castilian race, that came from the mountains and filled the whole land with their spirit--have, I trust, a future before them not unworthy of their ancient fortunes and fame; a future full of materials for a generous history, and a poetry still more generous;--happy if they have been taught, by the experience of the past, that, while reverence for whatever is noble and worthy is of the essence of poetical inspiration, and, while religious faith and feeling constitute its true and sure foundations, there is yet a loyalty to mere rank and place, which degrades alike its possessor and him it would honor, and a blind submission to priestly authority, which narrows and debases the nobler faculties of the soul more than any other, because it sends its poison deeper. But, if they have failed to learn this solemn lesson, inscribed everywhere, as by the hand of Heaven, on the crumbling walls of their ancient institutions, then is their honorable history, both in civilization and letters, closed for ever. APPENDIX. APPENDIX, A. ON THE ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH LANGUAGE. (See Vol. I. pp. 11 and 47.) The country which now passes under the name of Spain has been subjected to a greater number of revolutions, that have left permanent traces in its population, language, and literature, than any other of the principal countries of modern Europe.[394] At different periods, within the reach of authentic record, it has been invaded and occupied by the Phœnicians, the Romans, the Goths, and the Arabs; all distinct races of men with peculiar characteristics, and forming, in their various combinations with each other or with the earlier masters of the soil, still new races hardly less separate and remarkable than themselves. From the intimate union of them all, gradually wrought by the changes and convulsions of nearly three thousand years, has arisen the present Spanish people, whose literature, extending back about seven centuries, has been examined in the preceding volumes.