the author a blame, if any there be, which belongs not to him but to his country. It is also to be remarked that unless in cognate tongues, such as German and English, or Spanish and Italian, there are idiomatic expressions for which a translator can find no parallel. Your servant, sir,' with which the indignant lady punishes the impoliteness of the astonished narrator of the adventure, is the nearest approach-slightly vulgar and cockneyish as it is to the original, beso á usted la mano-' I kiss your hand.' But with these two specimens I close my client's defence-your lordship will know how to dispense justice, unbiassed by any consideration. If you think the heaviness, and shall I confess it?-the stupidity of some portion of the volume, are not redeemed by the merits of the rest by the playfulness, for instance, of the dramatic extracts from the same Breton de los Herreros(whose Ella es El, or She's the Man,' is worthy of a separate translation) from Burgos, and Don José de Castro, my client must submit as best he can to the inevitable blow. But I pray you to observe, that a judgment against him is verdict against Spanish literature altogether for he has made the best selection he could find; and if you will look back at the efforts of Spanish authors, in what has been boasted of as a palmier literary epoch than the present-if you will remember the wearisome drivellings of the writers of the Select Novels, such as The Lady of Cintra, written without the letter U, by a wit of this capital;— The Two Suns of Toledo, written without the letter A, by Isidoro de Robbes, native of Madrid-when you compare these, and many others of the same style, with the very worst of the extracts in this volume, I feel certain you will acquit my client of wilfully and maliciously intending to bring his country into contempt; but will rather praise him for his efforts to show that his countrymen have risen-not quite so high to be sure as Cervantes, or Mendoza, or the long list of their illustrious dramatists, but infinitely

above the low and miserable mediocrity of their pen-wielding predecessors for the last hundred years."

The trial had now lasted a long time, and at the conclusion of the defendant's speech, the prosecutor having waived his right of reply, his lordship, it was expected, would proceed with the summing up. But on his being addressed by counsel to this effect, he maintained an imperturbable silence, and it was only after the failure of repeated attempts, that it was discovered he was sound asleep-no efforts to wake him were successful, and the jury were powerfully addressed by both counsel, till one of the macers good-naturedly pointed out that they had followed his lordship's example, and were one and all of them in a state of the profoundest repose. At first the accused was suspected of having wilfully cast them all into a state of somnambulism, but the sleep seemed too placid and undisturbed to arise from any but natural causes. The accuser plumed himself on this result as completely proving his charges of utter stupidity and want of interest brought against the prisoner—as, if the extracts had been lively or entertaining, they would have kept the listeners awake. The counsel for the defence, on the other hand, contended that the result was a proof of the innocence of his client; for how would it have been possible to sleep if one tittle of the heinous accusations contained in the arraignment had been proved in the slightest degree? He was turning round to congratulate Don Eugenio de Ochoa on his triumphant acquittal, when he perceived the hand of the slumbering judge mechanically moving towards the crutch. It was evidently under the influence of a dream, not of the most agreeable nature, that this demonstration was made; and in order to avoid any unfortunate results, it was agreed between the contending counsel, who were luckily the only persons in court with their eyes open, that the prisoner should be allowed to slip quietly out of the saloon, and that his trial should be renewed on some future occasion.

June, 1839.—I HAD long wished to see something more of the Spanish coast than was to be seen in novels and newspapers. The arrival of a friend who had long felt the same wish decided me; and on a fine morning in the finest month of the year, we sent our valises on board the Peninsular steamer, and were rushing down the Thames, with wind and tide in our favour, at the rate of fifteen miles an hour.

I think it is Basil Hall, who, in one of his amusing miscellanies, denies the general Jeremiad about the unhappiness of leaving home, and affirms that all the unhappiness is in returning. This may be very well for a professional rover; but I admit that there is something of comfort in the feeling, that we are leaving all the discomforts of time, circumstance, and routine, a thousand miles behindabout to see new faces, new scenes, and new things; to have nothing in the world to do but to be amused; to go through the working population of kingdoms and continents in all the ease of perfect idleness; to feel one's self perfectly free from any one of the cares that knit the brows of the millions round us: and thus to float on, citizens of the world, without caring a straw about the world; and thus see all that we like, abandon all that we dislike-and, at the mere expenditure of the purse, finish our career like visitants from another globe, dropped from the Dog-star, or returning to the Georgium Sidus!

Our steamer made good way; and after gazing at the navigation of the river, certainly the most interesting since the days of Carthage, and throwing Tyre and Sidon into the shade without the slightest difficulty, passing huge ships going to and coming from quarters of the globe, for naming which a man would once have been tried for his life, and burned for a wizard-ships from Australia, from Lima, from Labrador, from the Antarctic; from every wild and wonderful corner of the earth-the grand conjuration of that greatest of all wizards, the Englishman's pocket, to fill him with all the good things of pole and line; we found ourselves,

in the glow of a summer sunset-and earth or sea has nothing lovelier than the last hours of the day on the coast of England!-smoothly rushing down Channel.

I give no description of our fellowvoyagers, further than to say, that they were of the usual order. Two invalid ladies attending an invalid girl, and all going to try the benefit of warm air in the South of Spain. They were evidently opulent from their attendance, and from the especial ceremony with which they were treated by the officials of the cabin. A military man, a demi-solde of the unlucky "Legion," going, in the "forlorn hope" of making the Spanish Government remember their services. Some mercantile men; some nondescripts; and one or two Spaniards, who, I apprehend, had been in London on some diplomatic mission-and who, like all unfledged diplomatists, were perpetually examining their despatch-boxes, knitting their brows into the most solemn repulsion, and, wrapt up in their cloaks, and conversing in whispers, as if they were afraid that their secrets would leak out by the slightest collision, walked clear of every body!

The night was, like the day, remarkably serene-a thing of good omen for the voyage. I have gone to sea on a Friday, and escaped, as may be seen! I have sailed with a fleet under convoy, and have not been run down; I have crossed the Atlantic with a general officer and his suite, and have not been obliged to quarrel with him when on board, nor fight a duel with his aides-de-camp on shore; I have sailed for twenty-four hours with a clergyman in the cabin-and even once went from Dover to Calais with the steerage crowded with French abbés-without encountering a gale! Yet I never left the land on what is termed a bad day, that I did not find the badness predominate through the voyage. So, give me sunshine and

sea room!

Not that I expected to reach Cadiz without some intimations that we had left terra firma. We had the Bay of Biscay to pass; and the eternal roll of the Atlantic there, is made to re