great safety-valve, or rather the great preserver of the people’s intellects, is found in the fact that they are never in a hurry about any thing. The old Romans had a good motto, _Festina lente_, hasten slowly; but the Spaniards never _hasten at all_. They despise punctuality. An hour after the time when a positive appointment had been made with me, a man in Seville said, when I told him I had been waiting, “Why, the Queen never comes till an hour after the time announced for her arrival.” And this utter indifference to the value of time, which is money all the world over, begets, or is begotten, for it is hard to say if it be the cause or the effect, of that perfect sense of ease, content with one’s condition, idle carelessness, that dismisses all anxiety for the future. Such people do not go crazy. And far above all other immediate causes of insanity in northern climes, is the use of spirituous liquors. The scholar drinks to keep up his mental fire, and when he becomes insane his malady is marked “excessive study.” The banker or merchant drinks too much, and when he is put into an asylum his madness is ascribed to his devotion to his business. The millions of our people drink, drink, drink,—and this vice of the north of Europe and of America yields thousands on thousands of cases of insanity every year. But in those countries where cheap wines, with little alcohol in them, are the common drink of the people, intemperance is comparatively rare. An English engineer, employing hundreds of men in building and repairing Spanish railways, assured me that intemperance is wholly unknown among them. The class of men who would be the most addicted to the vice with us in the United States, are here more temperate than any class of people in England or America. It is not to be supposed that this temperance is the result solely of the culture of the vine and the abundance of weak wine. It would be a false conclusion, from very inadequate premises, to infer such an idea. It is due in most part to the climate itself, which is at once favorable to the vine, and unfavorable to that elevation or excitement which strong drink begets. And in this delightful clime, where to live and breathe is a luxury, and to keep cool is at once a virtue and a joy, the heating stimulus of ardent spirits would not be sought as one of the pleasurable vices of the land. Therefore, and to this conclusion we are easily led, the people here in Spain are not likely to be, as a general thing, insane. And if we of colder climes could be so humble as to take a lesson from poor, old, decrepit Spain, we might learn from these facts to moderate our desires, to pursue the good we seek with less haste and more speed, to use the world as not abusing it, and resting now and then, avoid the lunatic asylum on our journey to the grave.