ceedings of the Cortes, of the canadas or paths for the travelling Merinos; and, as early as 1329, there were Alcaldes and Entregadores of the Mesta. * The chapter on manufactures is a repetition of the vulgar errors, which he had treated with such scorn in his Introduction. Among other instances of credulity, he tells us, that the woollen manufactures of Segovia employed 34,189 persons, at a time when contemporary authors inform us, that city contained only 5000 families, and consequently, not 25,000 inhabitants. + But no assertion is too extraordinary for Mr Laborde, when he is in one of his believing moods. He tells us, for example, that the city of Toledo used to make seven millions of red woollen night caps annually, and that the weavers of Segovia manufactured twentyfive thousand pieces of cloth from forty-five thousand pounds of wool. In a manufacturing country like ours, it is natural to have respect for manufacturing industry; but we apprehend Mr Laborde's admiration of woollens must appear excessive even in Yorkshire. Arts, arms, and letters, have each, in their turn, conferred immortality upon nations; but, in Mr Laborde's judgement, general opinion considers the reign of Charles I. as the most brilliant period in the annals of Spain; for that was the epoch when the exportation of cloths, serges, and other stuffs commenced. § Mr Laborde's chapter on commerce is not exempt from the defects, which we have been compelled to notice in the other parts of his book. Besides a total deficiency of general views in his reasonings, we meet in every page with inconsistencies in his statements, and errors in his facts. He tells us, for example, that Galicia exports none of its provisions; and, in the sentence that immediately follows, he adds, that it abounds with cattle, and the inhabitants are principally occupied with fishing and curing pilchards, both of which are exported in quantities to different parts of Spain; and after enumerating its other branches of trade, he concludes with the following profound remarks. Hence results an export trade, which exceeds the import, to the great advantage of Galicia.'|| As Mr Laborde has been at evident pains to collect information for his reader on the commerce of Spain. It is surprising that he never met with the Balanza del Comercio de Espana for 1792, printed by the Spanish government in 1803, where he would have found tables long enough and numerous enough for his purpose. Having had the curiosity to compare some of the statements, in Mr * Vol. IV. p. 327. Vol. IV. p. 338. + Sandoval-Carlos, &c. Vol. I. p. 224. § Ibid. p. 331. || Ibid. p. 382, 382. Mr Laborde's general table, of the foreign commerce of Spain * with those of the balanza, reducing the quantities in both to the same denominations, we shall present our readers with the result; leaving them to decide, whether most credit is due to Mr Laborde or to the Spanish Customhouse. Articles. EXPORTS, according to Mr Laborde. Wine from Valencia, Ditto from Xerez, Ditto from Malaga, according to the Balanza. 272,653 arrobas. 971,500 arrobas. We shall only add, that, according to Mr Laborde's table, Malaga alone exports one third more of wine than, according to the balanza, the whole of Spain does; but, in return, Mr Laborde states the price of Malaga at little more than one third of the price of Sherry. The chapter on roads, bridges and causeways, and that on canals and inland navigation, contain little that calls for our animadversion. We observe, however, that several important roads are omitted in Mr Laborde's enumeration;, particularly the magnificent one from Corunna to Astorga, and the spacious and excellent one from Badajoz to Seville. Mr Laborde is unreasonable in complaining of a deficiency of bridges in Spain; and when he states that there are only two over the Guadalquivir, he forgets the one at Anduxar, which he must have passed, if he had ever travelled from Madrid to Cadiz by the great post road. In his chapter on government, Mr Laborde exerts himself, for the third or fourth time in the course of his book, to prove to the Spaniards, that, in general, they have been governed by royal families of French extraction. We shall not stop to examine the accuracy of his historical deductions, though we observe, by theway, that he confounds the first house of Burgundy with the house of Bourbon. But for what purpose, we ask, is he so anxious to establish so unimportant a point? It cannot be meant as a reproach to Spaniards, by any Frenchman of the present day, that their ancestors submitted to be governed by princes of a fo-. reign origin. Nor can it be intended as an indirect recommendation of Joseph Bonaparte; for, not to speak of the weakness of * Vol. IV. p. 403. £ 3 the the argument, if so frivolous a consideration were entitled to any weight at all, it ought to operate to his prejudice; his family, though seated on the French throne, being indisputably Corsican. The account of the Camara and Council of Castille in the same chapter, is not quite correct; but we suspect that this is, in part at least, the fault of the English translator; to whom we beg leave to suggest, that there is no cabinet, no court of Common-pleas, no high constables in Spain; and that a Fiscal is not a cashier, but a sort of Attorney-general. The two following chapters, which treat of the Military Establishments and Finances, are chiefly remarkable for being behind hand in their information. A state is given of the army for 1798, and one of the navy for 1793. The account of the finances is not brought lower down than 1791. We know, from experience, how difficult it is to procure satisfactory and consistent information upon Spanish finances; and can therefore excuse Mr Laborde more readily in this, than in any other parts of his work, for the deficiencies of its execution. But we own, we are surprised, that he has not been able to obtain more recent accounts than those which he has published; and we cannot pay him the compliment of saying, that he has placed the subject in a clearer light than he found it; or that he appears to have given himself the smallest trouble to digest the information he had collected. The fourth volume concludes with tables of Measures, Weights, and Coins. The fifth volume begins with a chapter on Ecclesiastical Government, in which, we confess, that we have met with rather more of what the French call onction, than suits our palate. We have found also the usual proportion of historical blunders; and recollecting that Mr Laborde, in his Introduction, abuses ordinary historians for their attention to unimportant facts, we begin to suspect that he has formed a theory about writing history, without any regard to facts at all. His account of the Muzarabic ritual, is the fruit either of gross ignorance or of great prejudice. Whether that or the Roman ritual ought to have been preferred, we pretend not to decide; but that it was untainted with Mahometanism, requires no further argument to convince us, than that it was reestablished by Cardinal Ximenes, and is still preserved in the metropolitan church of Toledo. The next chapter, on the Administration of Justice, contains a very tolerable account of the judicial establishments of Spain, with some good cbservations on the defective administration of Justice in that country; but we observe with regrct, that, like the other parts of Mr Laborde's book, it is contaminated with historical blunders. He supposes, that the code of Alaric, called Bre ciarium viarium Aniani, is the same with the Fuero Juzgo, and denominates the recopilacion or digest of the Spanish law, a collection of Occasional edicts by the Kings of Spain. The chapters on Nobility, Royal and Military Orders, and Mayorazgos, require no particular animadversion. From an expression in the chapter on nobility, it appears to have been written before the French Revolution. Many passages, indeed, in Mr Laborde's book, have convinced us, that it is not so recent a compilation as the Introduction would give us to understand. great part of it, we are satisfied, was put together a long time since, in the same state in which it is now presented to the world. The census of 1797, which appeared in 1801, had not been published when Mr Laborde wrote his chapter on population, as he acknowledges in a passage, which certainly shows that he was then unacquainted with its results. In his chapters on the State of Science and State of Medicine, Mr Laborde gives a melancholy, and, we fear, not exaggerated description of the deficiencies of the Spanish seminaries of cducation. He sums up his account of them in the following paragraph. Such are the establishments in Spain for the advancement of science: in number fully adequate to the wants of the nation; but in spirit, activity and acquaintance with modern discoveries, miserably deficient. Their schools of astronomy are destitute of instruments and observatories; their courses of natural philosophy are without experiments; their teachers of natural history are unfurnished with cabinets; their professors of anatomy give no demonstrations; their schools of chemistry are without laboratories and apparatus; and their libraries are destitute of modern books. ' To the general truth of this picture, we apprehend that little objection can be offered. Some exception might be made in favour of particular schools of education. The University of SaJumanca, for example, is no longer in the state described by Mr Laborde. His information upon this, as upon many other subjects, is often singularly behind hand. He mentions, for instance, the Colégios Mayores in his account of 'Salamanca, but seems not to be aware that they have been suppressed for many years. There occurs also, in this chapter, which is certainly none of the worst of his book, a blunder of the most ridiculous kind. 'Lewis Velasquez,' he observes, wrote on coins; and Burriel published an able and interesting work on the weights, measures, writing, and antient laws of California.' Burriel, it is true, wrote a very curious and learned report, which was published in the name of the city of Toledo, on the antient weights and measures of Castille, containing many interesting particulars, and some original views, on the antient legislature and municipal constitu tion of the kingdom: he wrote also a very ingenious essay on the origin of the Spanish language, entitled, Paleografia Espanola; and he edited a description of California, compiled by Padre Venegas. These works Mr Laborde has embodied into one, and imagined for it a title compounded of the titles of all three. The chapters on the Spanish Literature, Theatre and Language, demand a much longer commentary than we have leisure or inclination to bestow. Mr Laborde has afforded few materials for criticism; but left ample room for dissertation upon these subjects. His catalogue of authors is full of names; but his estimate of their merits is vague, and seldom extends beyond a general praise or disapprobation of their works. He has contrived, however, in the few remarks he has offered, to console us for their brevity. What regard, in fact, is due to a critic, who pronounces Herrera to be one of the best of the Spanish historians; or what impression does he give of his acquaintance with Spanish literature, when he crowds his pages with obscure names, and omits that of Fray Lewis de Leon, whom his countrymen esteem one of their first poets, and the purest certainly, and best, of their writers in prose? Fray Lewis de Leon is not the only author of celebrity, whom we have missed in Mr Laborde's ample, though ill furnished catalogue. We looked in vain among his poets for Rioja, and among his historians for Moncada, Santa Colomæ, Mondejar, Sandoval, Lopez de Ayala, Pulgar, and, if we dare place him in that list, for Antonio Perez. As to the authors of the present day, we very soon discovered, that it was idle to look for them. A passage, which Mr Laborde, in the hurry of publication, had neglected to craze from his original notes, satisfied us, that, whoever was the author of his chapter on Spanish literature, it was composed before 1779, when the poem of the Cid was published by Sanchez, and probably soon after 1758, when Fray Gerundio first made its appearance. * In his account of the Spanish stage, Mr Laborde has given the following description of that amusing species of drama peculiar to Spain, called Saynete. 6 Saynetes,' he observes, are short prose comedies in one act, which very naturally represent the manners, habits and customs of the common people, with their modes of life, and the grotesque and comic scenes to which these may be supposed to give rise. Every thing in these pieces is natural; every thing is imitated with so much fidelity and truth, that the spectator imagines himself a witness of real transactions. The plot is usually simple, but lively; and the dialogue abounds with point and repartee. The acting greatly as * See Vol. V. p. 172 and p. 189. sists |