which lingers fondly in solitary places of the past, it may well be a rallying-point, and "Lovers' Trysting-tree."

'For us also it has its worth. A creation from the old ages, bright and balmy, if we visit it; and opening into the first History of Europe, of Mankind. Thus all is not Oblivion; but on the edge of the abyss, that separates the Old World from the New, there hangs a fair Rainbow-land; which also, in curious repetitions (twice over, say the critics), as it were in a secondary and even a ternary reflex, sheds some feeble twilight far into the deeps of the primeval Time.'-Carlyle.

Cid Campeador.

HE conquest of the Spanish Peninsula by the

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Moors early had an influence upon the language and literature of the country, for while the nations of Europe were almost destitute of literature of any kind, Moorish Spain became a distinguished centre of learning ; and no other nation of Europe can boast of so large a number of ancient popular poems, historical and romantic. This wealth of ballad lore may be attributed to various causes such as the unceasing conflicts between the Spaniards and the Moorish invaders, affording a long succession of stirring events to be recorded and had in remembrance; the short episodes of peace which occasionally recurred would also help to imbue the Spanish mind with that peculiar love of song which characterises the Arab nations; and further, the singular flexibility and facility of the Spanish language for poetical construction, combined with simplicity of rhyme and metre. The vivid imagination of the

people which produced the Arabian Nights' could not but have an effect upon the more solid and chivalrous romance of Spanish writers, and the Spanish language gradually incorporated many accessions from the Arabic, though these are not visible in the common tongue of the people. It was not, however, till the thirteenth century that Spanish, or rather Castilian, poetry became assimilated in spirit and form with the Arabic. The ancient ballads being generally anonymous and orally transmitted, it becomes difficult to fix a particular date to their composition, but they evidence an origin anterior to that of our English ballads, few or any of which are older than the beginning of the fifteenth century. The troubadours of Aragon and Catalonia were the chief means of raising the Spanish language into the position of having a literature worthy of being preserved; and in the Court of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Castilian became the language of fashion, which still further increased its importance-the Aragonese courtiers who had followed Ferdinand being led to abandon their mother-tongue and learn that of their adopted country, and since the sixteenth century the Castilian has alone been the language of Spanish literature.

Chivalric romance has ever been a favourite kind of literary effort in Spain, and there is scarcely an event or legend of early national importance which has not been versified in some way or other by the writers of that country-to adapt an accredited fact into the form of a song for the guitar being deemed quite consistent with the dignity of history. Though they thus possess great interest for both historian and antiquary, they cannot be strictly relied upon as authorities-the mere fact of oral transmission through a long succession of years invalidating their testimony to a great extent. In one respect, however, they may to the domestic historian prove valuable, in that they picture the actual state of society at a period when the country was under the thraldom of an intolerant priestcraft, and when the nobility possessed rights over their vassals which have long since been modified and softened down. ballads seldom exceed the bounds of possibility in their details, being greatly free from those absurdities which disfigure most of the prose romances of chivalry, and the incidents are generally of such a nature as few in our own times would find difficulty in crediting. One spirit and character is uniformly preserved in themthey always breathe the purest patriotism, strong love

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for civil liberty, great respect for all that is noble in sentiment and generous in feeling, and are also simple in narration and natural in style and diction. Further, they are pervaded by a tone of morality more elevated than that which pertains to the ballads of more northern nations—these latter frequently detailing crimes and outrages with a delight characteristic of a rude and barbarous state of society.

Having spoken thus briefly in regard to Castilian language and its romance, let us now turn to what has ever been considered the gem-the Great Poem—of Castilian literature, 'The Cid.' While a certain date or a particular author cannot be given to it, the best authorities agree in assigning the middle of the twelfth century as the birth-time of the epic, being thus about fifty years after the death of the principal personage in the poem, and more than a century before the epic of Dante was written. We have called it 'epic,' but certainly it only possesses a very shadowy claim to this title. The versified history of the Cid only covers a portion of his career, and is not the only account of the hero, for there is another version in prose, and Spanish literature possesses upwards of a hundred different ballads, not all of equal importance or anti