The distinguished woman to whom we have alluded carried, even to an incredible excess, this mixture of the sacred affections with the profane. In her voluminous writings, unrivalled in purity of language and elegance of style, she considers herself, always, as the bride of Jesus Christ, to whom she addresses herself with the same transports of love, and with the same demonstrations of tender submission and endearing respect, that might be used by an affectionate and dutiful wife to her husband. It requires but little knowledge of the human heart to see, at once, that in this mixture of two sentiments so opposed to each other as are that of the love profane and that of the love divine, the latter is liable to succumb to the former; and, in truth, this danger can only be averted by minds as favoured and as pure as was, without a doubt, the mind of that extraordinary woman. It is generally the case, and commonly observed in Spain, that the sensual element dominates over the mystical, and corrupts it. The common mass of mankind employs devotion as an instrument favourable to worldly views and to the material interests of life. In Andalucia, enamoured girls confide to the Virgin their ardent sorrows and desires, as the following couplet will show, and which is sung with frequency and is very popular in that province of the Peninsula:— La Virgen de las Angustias, Es la que sabe mi mal, Pues me meto en su capilla, Y no me harto de llorar. {16} With these amatory propensities was naturally bound up that spirit of knight-errantry which so much distinguished the national character of Spaniards among all the other nations of Europe; a spirit which neither the course of centuries, nor intestine nor foreign war, nor even revolution itself, although it has transformed in a few ages the temper of modern nations, has been able to blot out. The Spaniard was completely carried away in a transport by his religious practices, his gallantry, loyalty, bravery, exalted notions of honour, and other qualities of the mind, impregnated as they were with that poesy and wild romance which are delineated with so much propriety and skill by the immortal Cervantes.