“The Spanish language,” said an English writer in 1701, “is properly none at all, for if the Spaniards were to restore to the Egyptians, Grecians, Arabians, Moors, Jews, Romans, Vandals, Huns, Goths, French, and, lastly, Italians, the words they have taken from them, they must of necessity remain dumb.” And, again, the Spanish language “consists of a’s and o’s, and nothing else but mouthing and grimace.” Another Englishman, sixty years later, says of the Spanish language, that “As there is something pompous and magnificent in the length of its words and the sound of them, so there is also a peculiarity in the turn and manner of their phrases and expressions.” In the time of Spain’s greatness a larger measure of justice is bestowed on the Spanish language. “It is expressive, noble, and grave,” says Mme. d’Aulnoy; “it is only our own (_i.e._ French) which excels it.” But with the decay of Spain’s material prosperity the language seems to have fallen into a disrepute; can a nation that possesses no gold currency and no battleships possess a language or literature worthy of the name? It may be admitted that many modern Spaniards themselves do not write correct or idiomatic Spanish; the language has been crowded with foreign importations, and while it is the easiest language to learn superficially, it is, by reason of its immense wealth of words and baffling reserves of idioms, one of the most difficult to learn well. “The best Castilian is here spoken,” said Mme. d’Aulnoy of Burgos, and it is still in Castille that the purest Spanish is to be learnt, in regions, _i.e._ where, owing to the climate, the foreigner makes but a briefest stay. Toledo is more likely to be visited for two days to see its churches, than for two months to learn the language; it gives no inviting impression of comfort to the stranger. In “Don Quixote” we read that “They cannot speak so well who are brought up in the Zocodover as those who spend the day walking to and fro in the cloisters of the Cathedral, yet all are Toledans.” But although among the peasants of Spain there are many _prevaricadores del buen lenguaje_, with reckless transposition of consonants (such as _probe_ for _pobre_), their language is often essentially purer and more idiomatic, with “a peculiarity in the turn and manner of their phrases,” than that of the _reprochadores de voquibles_, who cast it in their teeth, and who would die rather than offend _la grammaire_, but allow themselves the constant use of foreign words and expressions in the construction of their sentences. True Castilian has a combined softness and vigour, enabling it to be at once impassioned and concise, a harmony and strength scarcely to be found in any other language, and a pithiness which springs from the soil and has not its origin in books. Many of Spain’s greatest writers have wielded lance and pen alternately; they are not “grammarians who hack and slash for the genitive case,” but in the clear