It may militate against a respect for Lowell’s judgment in such matters, that after a score of years the vaticinations which he ventured to express in this despatch have not yet found a realization; yet twenty years is a short period in a nation’s life, and these opinions carry with them so much political faith, and are delivered with so much moderation, that they form interesting reading to-day, and may well be repeated here. “My own conclusion,” he writes, “is that sooner or later (perhaps sooner than later) the final solution (of existing political problems) will be a conservative republic like that of France. Should the experiment there go on prosperously a few years longer, should the French Senate become sincerely republican at the coming elections, the effect here could not fail to be very great, perhaps decisive. In one respect, the Spanish people are better prepared for a Republic than might at first be supposed. I mean that republican habits in their intercourse with each other are and have long been universal. Every Spaniard is a caballero, and every Spaniard can rise from the ranks to position and power. This also is in part from the Mahometan occupation of Spain. _Del rey ninguno abajo_ is an ancient Spanish proverb implying the equality of all below the King. Manners, as in France, are democratic, and the ancient nobility here as a class are even more shadowy than the dwellers in the Faubourg Saint Germain. “In attacking Señor Cánovas the opposition papers dwell upon the censorship of the press, upon the reëstablishment of monachism under other names, and upon the onerous restrictions under which the free expression of thought is impossible. The ministerial organs reply to the first charge that more journals were undergoing suspension at one time during the liberal administration of Señor Sagasta than now, and this is true. The fact is that no party, and no party leader, in Spain, is capable of being penetrated with the truth, perhaps the greatest discovery of modern times, that freedom is good above all because it is safe. Señor Cánovas is doing only what any other Spaniard would do in his place, that is, endeavoring to suppress opinions which he believes to be mischievous. But of the impolitic extreme to which the principle is carried under his administration, though, I suspect, without his previous consent, the following fact may serve as an example. Señor Manuel Merelo, professor in the Instituto del Cardenal Cisneros, published in 1869 a compendium of Spanish history for the use of schools. In speaking of the Revolution of 1868, he wrote, ‘It is said that the light conduct (_las léviandades_) of Queen Isabel II. was one of the causes of this catastrophe.’ After an interval of nine years, he has been expelled from his chair and his book suppressed.