be paid for it as in other countries,” and of “the plain habit of the Spaniards, how the King and Lords themselves wear but a cloak of Colchester bayze, and the ladies mantles in cold weather of white flannell.” To a learned Spaniard, Masdeu, they are, to quote but a few of his judgments, “lively, swift in conception, slow and thoughtful in coming to a resolution, active and effectual in carrying it into execution. They are the stoutest defenders of religion, and masters in asceticism.” “Their disinterestedness and honesty in commerce is known to all. They are frugal at table, especially averse from any excess in drinking. In conversation they are serious and taciturn, not giving to biting speech, courteous, affable, and pleasant; they hate flattery, but they respect others and look to be respected themselves. They speak with majesty, but without affectation. They are generous, serviceable, kindly, and have a pleasure in conferring benefits, and they exalt things foreign more than their own. They have envy, pride, and a love of glory, but with noble, redeeming qualities. In their attire they are neat and moderate; when they go abroad they are dressed well and smartly, but with a befitting gravity.” “They spend with magnificence and extravagance.” A French traveller, Mme. d’Aulnoy,[2] in the seventeenth century, says of the Spanish that “Nature has been kinder to them than they are to themselves; they are born with more wit than others; they have a great quickness of mind join’d with great solidity; they speak and deliver their words with ease; they have a great memory; their style is neat and concise, and they are quick of apprehension; it is easie to teach them whatever they have a mind to; they are perfect masters in Politicks, and when there is a necessity for it they are temperate and laborious.”... “They are patient to excess, obstinate, idle, singular philosophers; and, as to the rest, men of honour, keeping their words tho’ it cost them their lives.” She considers their greatest defect to be a “passion for revenge,” and speaks of “their fantastick grandeur.” A short account by an Englishman in 1701, has little good to say of the Spanish, except that they “have an incomparable Zeal to plant the Catholick Religion.” He notes their sluggishness, their immorality, and it is, moreover, impossible to distinguish a Spanish Cavalier from a Cobler, while most of their houses are “of earth and like Mole-hills, but one storey high.” They have an “esprit orgueilleux,” and treat strangers “de turc à maure,” says a Frenchman of the same period,[3] so that the Englishman may have had some slight, some _turc à maure_ experience in Spain. Another Englishman,[4] half a century later, writes that the Spanish are “generous, liberal, magnificent, and charitable; religious without dispute, but devout to the greatest excess of superstition.”... “If they have any predominant fault it is perhaps