ground down by taxes,[33] and work incessantly only to hover on the fringes of starvation; _todo sea por Dios_, they say, and content themselves with the observation that honesty and riches do not fit into one sack--_honra y provecho no caben en un saco_. There is a certain elemental hardness in the Spanish which helps them to support hardships stoically and, indeed, to be scornful of modern comforts and luxury. Their indifference towards disquiet and discomfort and noisy uproar[34] often dismays the foreigner, but it is not that they are inconsiderate of the feelings of others, they have a deep sensitiveness and refinement, but they have not been enervated and rendered over-sensitive by a luxurious civilization. Their climate, with its harsh extremes of cold and heat,[35] produces a people like that of León’s _Alcalá de los Zegríes_, “rigorous in their virtues and their vices, violent in their loves and hates.” They go easily to extremes; Spanish intellects are apt to be either totally undeveloped, or else over-subtle in nice distinctions, and action in the same way, when it comes, comes with violence and excess, like the rivers of Spain which, parched all summer, pour down after rain in rushing torrents. The charges of cruelty and fanaticism, the bull-fight and the _auto-de-fé_, have fixed themselves upon the Spanish. They are by nature inflexible and uncompromising, and like to carry out their principles without looking to the many delicate shades of grey between white and black. But they are not by nature cruel; they support bodily sufferings with courage and inflict them upon others as the lesser of two evils, burning the heretics to prevent the spread of their heresy; and indeed to men convinced that these “pertinacious schismaticks” were to burn for ever and ever in another place, a touch of fire in this life could hardly seem an excessive punishment.[36] Cruelty to animals on the roads of Spain is extremely rare, and at the bull-fights[37] it is only fair to observe that, while the foreigner’s attention is directed to the sufferings of the horses, the whole mind of the Spaniard is bent on intricacies of the conflict between man and bull, and nice passes which escape the foreigner.[38] The _autos-de-fé_ and the Inquisition have cast over Spain a reputation for fanaticism and obscurantist bigotry. But the Spanish, while eager supporters of their faith, are too independent to bow down for long to a Clerical predominance; they cannot be called a priest-ridden nation.[39] _Ni buen fraile por amigo, ni malo por enemigo_, says one of their proverbs--make no friend of a good monk, nor enemy of a bad; and again, _Haz lo que dice el fraile no lo que hace_--follow the monk’s precept, not his example. They believe uncompromisingly in the Roman Catholic religion, but have a ready eye for the faults of its ministers; they love and reverence the Church as a refuge from reality, but continue to be realists in their mysticism.