Certain strong characteristics of the Spanish people, with which the history of the world makes us well acquainted, are as marked in this hurrying age of railway and telegraph as ever they were in the past. One of the stupid remarks one constantly hears made by the unthinking tourist is: "Spain is a country where nothing ever changes." This is as true of some of the national traits of character as it is false in the sense in which the speaker means it. He has probably picked it out of some handbook. Chief among these traits is dignity. The most casual visitor is impressed by it, sometimes very much to his annoyance, whether he finds it among the unlettered muleteers of Castile, the labourers of Valencia, or the present proprietor of some little Old-World _pueblo_ off the ordinary route. The _mayoral_ of the diligence in the old times, the domestic servant of to-day, the señora who happens to sell you fish, or the señor who mends your boots, all strike the same note--an absolute incapacity for imagining that there can be any inequality between themselves and any other class, however far removed from them by the possession of wealth or education. Wealth, in fact, counts for nothing in the way of social rank; a poor _hidalgo_ is exactly as much respected as a rich one, and he treats his tenants, his servants, all with whom he comes in contact, as brothers of the same rank in the sight of God as himself. _Bajo el Rey ninguno_ is their proverb, and its signification, that "beneath the King all are equal," is one that is shown daily in a hundred ways. The formula with which you are expected to tell the beggars--with whom, unfortunately, Spain is once more overrun--that you have nothing for them, is a lesson in what someone has well called the "aristocratic democracy" of Spain: "Pardon me, for the love of God, my brother," or the simple _Perdone me usted_, using precisely the same address as you would to a duke. It is no uncommon thing to hear two little ragged urchins, whose heads would not reach to one's elbow, disputing vigorously in the street with a _Pero no, Señor, Pero si, Señor_, as they bandy their arguments. English travellers are sometimes found grumbling because the señor who keeps a wayside _posada_, or even a more pretentious inn in one of the towns, does not stand, hat in hand, bowing obsequiously to the wayfarer who deigns to use the accommodation provided. This is one of the things in which Spain, to her honour, _is_ unchanged. The courtesy of her people, high or low, is ingrained, and if foreign--perhaps especially English and American--travellers do not always find it so, the fault may oftenest be laid to their own ignorance of what is expected of them, and to what is looked upon as the absolute boorishness of their own manners.