Although many local customs are dying out, we may still see some of the curious street sights described by Ford fifty years ago, and the Mariolatry he deplored is still as active as ever. The goodly show of dainties in the shops, however, belie his somewhat acrimonious description of a Spanish reception. "Those who receive," he wrote, "provide very little refreshment unless they wish to be covered with glory; space, light, and a little bad music, are sufficient to amuse these merry, easily-pleased souls, and satisfy their frugal bodies. To those who, by hospitality and entertainment, can only understand eating and drinking--food for man and beast--such hungry proceedings will be more honored in the breach than in the observance; but these matters depend much on latitude and longitude." Be this as it may, either the climate of Barcelona has changed, or international communication has revolutionized Spanish digestion. Thirty years ago, when travelling in Spain, it was no unusual sight to see a spare, aristocratic hidalgo enter a restaurant, and, with much form and ceremony, breakfast off a tiny omelette. Nowadays we find plenty of Spanish guests at public ordinaries doing ample justice to a plentiful board. English visitors in a Spanish house will not only get good music, in addition to space and light, but abundant hospitality of material sort. The Spain of which Ford wrote so humorously, and, it must be admitted, often so maliciously, is undergoing slow, but sure, transformation. Many national characteristics remain--the passion for the brutal bull-fight still disgraces a polished people, the women still spend the greater portion of their lives in church, religious intolerance at the beginning of the twentieth century must be laid to the charge of a slowly progressive nation. On the other hand, and nowhere is the fact more patent than at Barcelona, the great intellectual and social revolution, described by contemporary Spanish novelists, is bringing the peninsula in closer sympathy with her neighbors. Many young Spaniards, _for_ instance, are now educated in England, English is freely spoken at Malaga, and its literature is no longer unknown to Spanish readers. These facts indicate coming change. The exclusiveness which has hitherto barred the progress of this richly-dowed and attractive country is on the wane. Who shall say? We may ere long see dark-eyed students from Barcelona at Girton College, and a Spanish society for the protection of animals prohibiting the torture of bulls and horses for the public pleasure. Already--all honor to her name--a Spanish woman novelist, the gifted Caballero, has made pathetic appeals to her country-folks for a gentler treatment of animals in general. For the most part, it must be sadly confessed, in vain!