strength for all the generations which have come of age since the closing years of the nineteenth century. Directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, there is no man who counts in Spanish culture to-day who has not come under the influence of his teachings, and particularly of the highest of them—a life agitated and courageous in its youth, noble and serene in old

age, and always clean, pure, and devoted to the service of man.

RAMON PEREZ DE AYALA

VICTOR Huco, who did not know Spain, though he thought he did, speaks in one of his poems of mes Espagnes ', in the plural. That is probably the best, or at any rate the most accurate thing he ever said about Spain. Spain is plural. Her ancient kingdoms, however much carved into artificial provinces by the theoretical constitution-builders of 1812, still live, if not in legal and official papers, yet with the more fruitful life of nature and the spirit.

Thus the. genius of Spain is to-day as composite as ever, and we must expect to find in it the intensity, earnestness, and quaint lack of grace of the Basque, the intellectualism and imitative talent of the Catalan, the Mediterranean sense ofeloquence and form of the Valencian, the graceful, and at times deeply significant spontaneity of the Andalusian, the dry but warm inspiration of Castile, the primitive force of Aragon, the lyrical sweetness of Galicia, and that elusive charm which makes of Asturias a kingdom apart among the kingdoms of Spain.

Asturias, the smallest of the Spains ', is a country which stretches as a compromise between the Cantabrian Range and the sea, linking up the two irreconcilable opposites by means of an ingenious system of valleys. Mountains, valleys, and seas, together with that soft, delicate atmosphere which such complex countries usually enjoy under moderate climates, are the formative elements of the Asturian character. And thus we find in the Asturians that noble attitude, that elevated outlook, which the eyes of mountaineers, slowly and through generations, teach their minds and hearts ; that shrewdness, that penetration, and that