vey to the mind of the reader a distinct notion of the peculiar costume and language which distinguish the natives of this country. Two motives have guided me in this. In the first place, it is, now-a-days, known to all who are likely to peruse what I write, that the inhabitants of those provinces, which lie at the immediate base of the Pyrenees, are a race totally distinct, and essentially different in almost all respects, from either the Spaniards or the French. They speak a language of their own, namely Basque, which is said by those who profess to be acquainted with it, to resemble the Celtic more than any other known tongue. The dress of the men consists usually of a blue or brown jacket, of coarse woollen cloth; of breeches or trowsers of the same, with a waistcoat, frequently of scarlet; grey worsted stockings, and wooden shoes. On their heads they wear a large flat bonnet, precisely similar to the Lowland bonnet, or scone, of Scotland. They are generally tall, but thin; and they present altogether an appearance as uncouth as need be fancied. The women, again, equip themselves in many respects as the fish-women of the good town of Newhaven are equipped, with this difference, that they seldom cover their heads at all, and, like the men, wear wooden clogs. They are a singular tribe, and appear to take a pride in those peculiarities, which keep them from coalescing with either of the nations among whom they dwell. But all this, as I said before, is too generally known, to render it imperative upon me minutely to repeat it. My second motive for keeping, in a great degree, silent on the head of manners and customs, is one, the efficiency of which the reader will not, I dares ay, call in question; namely, the want of opportunity to make myself sufficiently master of the subject, to enter, con amore, upon it. No man who journeys through a country, in the train of an invading army, ought to pretend to an intimate acquaintance with the manners and customs of its inhabitants. Wherever foreign troops swarm, the aborigines necessarily appear in false colours. The greater part of them, indeed, abandon their homes, whilst such of them as remain are servile and submissive through terror; nor do they ever display their real characters, at least in the presence of a stranger. Hence it is, that nine tenths of my brethren in arms, who write at all, commit the most egregious blunders in those very portions of their books where they particularly aim at enlightening the reading public; and that the most matter-of-fact tour, spun out by the most matter-offact man or woman, who has visited the seat of the late war since the cessation of hostilities, contains, and must contain, more certain information touching the fire-side occupations of the people, than all the "Journals" or "Letters to Friends at Home," which this age of book-making has produced. Frankly confessing, therefore, that any account which I could give of the manners and habits of the Basques, would deserve as little respect as the accounts already given by other military tourists, I am content to keep my reader's attention rivetted-if, indeed, that be practicable-upon my own little personal adventures, rather than amuse him with details, which might be true, as far as I know to the contrary, but which, in all probability, would be false. Proceed we, then, in our own way. From the day of the shipwreck, up to the 23d of the month, I have no recollection of any occurrence worthy to be recorded. Advantage was taken, it is true, of that period of rest, to lay in a fresh stock of tea, and other luxuries, with the means of accomplishing which an opportune disbursement of one month's pay supplied us; whilst an ample market was established by certain speculating traders, who followed the progress of the army from post to post. Secoa was now the grand mart for the procurement of necessaries, a considerable fleet of English vessels having entered it; and hither I and my comrades resorted for the purchase of such articles as habit, or caprice, prompted us to purchase. Then by coursing, shooting, and riding-sometimes to Biaritz, and the house of our pretty Frenchwomen-sometimes to St Jean de Luz, where, by the way, races were regularly established, and occasionally to the cantonments of a friend in another division of the army, we found our days steal insensibly, and therefore agreeably, away; nor was it without a feeling somewhat akin to discontent that we saw ourselves again setting forth, to take our turn of outpost duty at the old station beside Fort Charlotte. HORE HISPANICE. No. XI. LA DEVOCION DE LA CRUZ-THE WORSHIP OF THE CROSS. By Don Pedro Calderon de la Barea. IN the last Number of the Hora Hispanica, we gave an analysis, intermixed with extracts, of Calderon's Famosa Comedia, Agradecer y no Amar, together with some general remarks upon the Spanish Theatre. We now propose to treat La Devocion de la Cruz, The Worship of the Cross, a Tragedy of the same author's, in nearly a similar manner. To our former general remarks we have little to add ; the marked difference between tragedy and comedy, to which we are accustomed in the literature of most countries, not existing in Spain. Thalia there speaks the same language, and occupies herself with the concerns of personages as dignified as her gorgeous sister, whilst Melpomene suffers the jesting Gracioso to pour forth his quibbling buffooneries, amidst the "sweeping" of her "sceptred pall;" and last, and perhaps strangest of all, the deepest tragedies bear upon their title-page the same extraordinary denomination of, Famosa Comedia; so that, literally, until we come to the decisive word, " muere," dies, or the curtain falls, leaving everybody alive, we remain wholly ignorant whether we are perusing a tragedy or a comedy. It is not that to this rule there are no exceptions; we have met with regular Tragedias, in heroic lines of ten or eleven syllables, and in five acts, about Seleucus, Mithridates, Xerxes, and other such classical worthies; but these appear to be attempts at imitating les merveilles du Theatre Français, and not to belong to the properly national drama. La Devocion de la Cruz is not exactly the tragedy of Calderon's which our own unassisted taste might have selected, but it is one generally ranked amongst his best works. The highly-esteemed German critic, A. W. Schlegel, has thought it deserving of the dedication of his time and talents to translating it into his own language; and it affords, together with a very curious illustration of the Spanish "Theory of Moral Sentiments," an example of the familiar introduction of religion, and of actual miracles upon the stage, the least revolting to British feelings of any with which we are acquainted. If there is one point of the story not strictly in conformity with the delicacy of the nineteenth century, it must be remembered, in palliation of Calderon's offence, what insupportable grossness disgraced every other European stage in his day's, and long afterwards, a reproach from which the Spanish drama is, if not absolutely, yet so comparatively pure, as may well induce us to pardon the small violation of propriety alluded to. In La Devocion de la Cruz, "the buskined stage" is enlivened by a pair of Graciosos, the second being the wife of the first. These, seemingly untragical persons, open the piece with comic lamentations over the disaster of their donkey, who appears to have fallen into a hole or ravine of the mountains ; and with mutual reproaches for having respectively been the occasion of the accident. Mengua, the wife, goes in search of assistance to extricate the fallen animal, and Gil, the husband, after a ludicrous panegyric of the virtues of his Jenny ass, observing two caballeros alight from their horses with symptoms of warlike intentions, conceals himself to watch their movements. Cowardice and curiosity are, it should be observed, equally indispensable qualities in the Gracioso. Lisardo and Eusebio come on, and the former says— No further need we seek; this sheltered place, So far retired from all frequented paths, Suits well my purpose. Draw your sword, Eusebio, For thus I challenge men resembling you To fight. Eus. Although I have sufficient cause To use my sword in being hither brought, Yet fain, Lisardo, would I learn your motive, Say what complaint against me you can To bury them in silence, in oblivion; Eus. Throw them down upon the earth, I'll thence recover them. Lis. There; do you pause? What moves you? Eus. Ill betide the man who trusts His secrets unto paper! Out upon it! Like a flung stone, the hurling hand is known, Where it shall light, we're ignorant. Eus. The writing I must needs ac- Lis, 'Twere bootless to declare myself Son of Lisardo Curcio, of Sienna. Outrage nobility, it can release To name her!) either knows not, or re. gards not. But Julia, ne'ertheless, remains my sister; Would she were not!-and you will please t' observe, That women of her breeding are not wooed With amorous billets, cunning flatteries, Unsanctioned gifts, nor shameless go More guiltily includes you in her guilt. For if my sister pleased you as a wifeAnd 'tis not possible, nor do I deem You dared to look on her with other purpose, Nor yet with that, for rather than behold her Wedded to you, by Heavens, I myself Would murder her! But, howsoe'er that be, If you desired her hand, honour required You should disclose your wishes to my father, Not unto her; 'twas then my father's part To judge if upon you he would bestow her. When needy Caballeros equally They seek the sacred shelter of a convent: My sister Julia, that to-morrow's sun Sees her a nun, or freely, or compell'd. And, for the pledges of such idle love Eus. Lisardo, hold your hand, and Has lasted whilst I listen'd to your slights, Hear now my answer, and, although prolix Be the relation of my fortunes, though Unreasonable seem the call on patience, Since we are here alone, perforce must fight, And one perforce must die, lest Heav'n decree That I should fall, listen to prodigies Must not in everlasting silence bury. They found me in the bosom of these mountains. Three days they heard my moanings, but forbore, Through terror of wild beast, to search the brake In which I lay, uninjured. doubt Who can That 'twas the sacred Cross protected me? At length a shepherd, who through ev'ry hazard Sought a strayed ewe, discovered my rough bed, And bore me to the village of Eusebio, Who then, not causelessly, was there abiding; He told him all the wonders of my birth, And, Heaven's clemency inspiring his, He sent me to his mansion, as his son There rear'd me. I, Eusebio of the Cross, Am nam'd from him, and from that blessed Cross, I think he had refused; for in such cases, My earliest nurse, my earliest protector. My genius led me to make arms my busi ness; Letters became my pastime. In due season Eusebio died, and left me his sole heir. Miracles enough occur in the course of the play, to justify our omitting about an hundred lines of this speech, in which Eusebio narrates all those which the cross, stamped naturally upon his bosom, has already wrought for his preservation from various perils. He ends his discourse with a declaration, that he is too angry at Lisardo's behaviour to justify his own, as he could; that since they will not give him Julia in marriage, he will make her his mistress; and that no convent shall secure her from him. They then fight, and Lisardo falls, saying I'm wounded! Eus. And not slain? Lis. No, in my arms Vigour enough remains.-Alas! The Seems wanting to my feet. So life is wanting. Lis. Let me not expire Without confession. Eus. Die, unworthy wretch! her unlucky favourite; and then leads them all away in pursuit of Eusebio, rather unnaturally forgetting, as it should seem, his own more especial concern, the fallen donkey. The next scene is in Curcio's house. Julia comes on with her maid Arminda, lamenting, in rhyme, her brother's discovery and seizure of Eusebio's letters. Eusebio steals into the chamher, says apart, that he must persuade Julia to elope with him before she shall hear of Lisardo's death; and immediately proceeds to put this plan in execution, by means of a longish harangue upon her father's conventual designs: With what prospect of success we know not, for before Julia has advanced farther in her answer than, r Listen, Eusebio," Arminda announces the approach of old Curcio, and the lover is immediately and inevitably concealed in an adjoining room. The purpose of the father's visit is to announce to his daughter the glad tidings that she is the next day to be wedded to the Deity. For this result of his paternal care he claims her joyful gratitude: she, on the contrary, begins to remonstrate, and argue, very unthankfully, upon Lis. Not unconfessed, I pray you by her right to choose her own condition that cross in life. Curcio indignantly exclaims that she cannot be his daughter; that her unworthy conduct revives and confirms all his half-forgotten suspicions. He then turns Arminda out of the room, in order to reveal to Julia a secret he has long kept to himself; and proceeds, in asonante lines, to tell her that he had, long ago, been sent by the Senate of Sienna upon an embassy to Rome, which detained him eight months; that, upon his return, he had found his wife, Rosmira, near her confinement; and, although she had given him notice of her situation in her first letters, he had immediately concluded that she was false to him;-upon what grounds he does not explain. That he was miserable in consequence of these suspicions, and determined to revenge himself; that in order to effect this the more secretly, he took his wife upon a hunting party into the mountains, separated her from the company, led her to a most retired and savage spot.-The story is here interrupted by the return of Arminda, followed by the vil lagers, bearing the dead body of Li sardo. The father's grief is poured out in stanzas of eight lines, in which the Gracioso Gil takes part to say that Eusebio was the murderer. Curcio, in a rage, declares that Julia shall remain locked up in that room with the corpse until she enters her convent; and they all leave her. Eusebio immediately rejoins her, when they return to simple asonancias; and, after a long discussion of her reasons for loving and for hating him, Julia, as her last proof of affection, bids her criminal adorer escape by a window which opens into the garden, and never see her more, declaring herself now most willing to obey her father, and imprison the brief remnant of her life in a cell. Eusebio urges her rather to kill him, for which act of justice he offers her his sword. She again insists upon his flying. He replies 'Twere better I should die, for if I live 'Twill be impossible I e'er should cease To idolize thy beauties. Though inclosed Within a convent's wall, ne'er shalt thou be From me secure. Julia. Guard thou thy menaced life, Of my security leave me the care The conversation is broken by the opening of the door; Eusebio escapes through the window, Julia retires into the room in which he had been concealed; the servants remove the dead body, and the first jornada closes. The second opens in the mountains; a shot is heard, and Eusebio enters in the character of a captain of banditti, followed by his gang. The inferior robbers extol their leader's recent feat. Ricardo. The furious lead has passed Upon the tender flowers. Eusebio. Plant a cross Above his grave, and God forgive his sins. Ricardo. Devotion is not wanting ev'n in robbers. [Exeunt RICARDO and CELIO. Eusebio. Since destiny has thus transla ted me Into a robber-captain, be my crimes Infinite as my sorrow. My harsh country, As though I'd treach'rously assassinated The fall'n Lisardo, persecutes my life. My lands and houses are confiscated, Even a bare subsistence is denied me. And thus her cruelty and my resentment Compel me, in defence of mine own safety, Works miracles? Alberto. I am, of living men, Oh Captain, the most fortunate; for I, Hardly assured, renounced both palms and laurels, And flying from the world's deceits, came hither To seek security in solitude, Where truth dwells naked. Rome I vi. sited, And by the Pope was authorized to found Eus. Say what this book? Al. The fruit of all my studies, the sole tribute |