The Spaniard alone in Europe has retained the faculty of looking at a nation’s acts as those of a man, and appreciating it thereby. He does not ask what it says or intends, or what food it eats, or how many servants it has. He looks at its _dealings_ with himself. The Spaniard knows that his two neighbours, for one hundred and forty years, have been seeking to rob and overreach him; plotting one day the partition of his property, the next, the supplanting of his heir; constantly engaged in intrigues amongst his servants, and the one or the other insisting on ruining his steward. He sees that, during all that time, they have gained nothing; but while injuring him, have themselves squandered incalculable fortunes and innumerable lives,--what can he feel towards them but hatred and disgust? Fortunate is it for them, he does so; for this prevents either of them getting a footing in Spain: if the one could, the other would and could also; and the scenes of the Inquisition would then be repeated. But in the struggle of Rome and Carthage the world remained the prize of the victor; the struggle between England and France will be certainly at the cost of both, and assuredly will terminate in the supremacy of neither, and out of Spain that contest may yet come, unless there be sense enough in one country or the other to know what its agents are about, and to stop them. GIBRALTAR AS EXHIBITED IN MURRAY’S HAND-BOOK. “It was captured during the War of the Succession by Sir George Rooke, July 24th, 1704, who attacked it suddenly, and found it garrisoned by only one hundred and fifty men, who immediately had recourse to relics and saints. It was taken by us in the name of the Archduke Charles; this was the first stone which fell from the vast but ruinous edifice of the Spanish monarchy, and George I. would have given it up at the peace of Utrecht, so little did he estimate its worth, and the nation thought it ‘a barren rock, an insignificant fort, and a useless charge.’ What its real value is as regards Spain, will be understood by supposing Portland Island to be in the hands of the French. It is a bridle in the mouth of Spain and Barbary. It speaks a language of power which alone is understood and obeyed by those cognate nations. The Spaniards never knew the value of this barren rock until its loss, which now so wounds their national pride. Yet Gibraltar in the hands of England is a safeguard that Spain never can become a French province, or the Mediterranean a French lake. Hence the Bourbons north of the Pyrenees have urged their poor kinsmen-tools to make gigantic efforts to pluck out this thorn in their path. The siege by France and Spain lasted four years. Then the very ingenious M. d’Arcon’s _invincible_ floating batteries, that could neither be burnt, sunk, nor taken, were burnt, sunk, and taken by plain Englishmen, who stood to their guns on the 13th of September, 1783.”--(p. 341.)