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In Spain actresses-at least during the last twenty years-live in modest retirement, with no outbreaks of Bohemian ostentation or eccentricity. It often happens that when they marry they renounce the profession and dedicate themselves entirely to the labors and duties of home. This, though far from blameworthy, proves that they were wanting in the bright spark of enthusiastic genius which makes the true artist. Possibly this halfheartedness has something to do with the decline of the theatre and the increasing lack of good actresses, which is making the creation of female character for the stage almost impossible in these daysloss deplored by all our play-writers.

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In a study on Spanish women I cannot omit a department of life in which the aristocracy, the middle class, and the people are intermixed and live in common. I mean the nunneries. Although there exist convents which are preferred for high-born novices, like Las Huelgas and Las Salesas, and in some admission is only granted to those who can show four quarterings, the fact remains that in many convents of Concepcionistas, Benedictines, and Capuchines, the rich and noble lady who has been induced to take the veil by a religious impulse, or a disappointed affection, prays in the convent chapel side by side with the humble domestic servant who has had to depend on charity to enable her to amass the dowry necessary for a" bride of Christ." The remark I wish to make with regard to nuns in Spain is that they also, strange as it may seem, are undergoing a transformation, the inevitable result of the course of events. old-fashioned type of nun, who passed her life in contemplation, psalm-singing, making sweetmeats, almond-paste, scapularies, and pin-cushions, is gradually giving place to the modern sister, less conventional and more practical, dedicated by preference to teaching or works of charity, desirous to learn and anxious to model herself on the French sisters, who, together with the convents of the Sacré Coeur, and other institutions of the same nature, have brought about this radical change in the cloister life of Spain. Nowadays the romantic, old-fashioned convents, with their double jalousies bristling with spikes, and their melancholy gardens, enclosed in high walls, within which the life was purely contem

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plative and ascetic, are becoming rarer and more deserted. The religious institutions which gain in popularity are, as I have pointed out, the half-secular ones, which interest themselves in succoring the poor and educating girls. Among charitable institutions I must cite, as a recent Spanish foundation, the Little Sisters of the Poor (Las Hermanitas de los Pobres). In teaching, the guiding spirit comes from France. Our own nuns, who are, of course, much the same as their lay compatriots, are beginning to understand that in order to teach, it is necessary first to learn; and perhaps, in a year or two, the standard of female culture in the convents will rise -a necessary condition to their maintenance and prosperity.

In Spain the common people more than any other class preserve the national character and the fundamental ideas and feelings consecrated by tradition. I suppose this is the case in every country, and that the purest national types, moral and physical, are to be found among the commonalty and specially among the women. Still a great difference exists between the women in town, village, and country; and we may even say that in Spain there exist at least ten or twelve widely different popular female types.

Where can be found a greater contrast than that which is afforded by the women of the large Spanish towns, the ouvrière of Cataluña on the one hand and the

'chula" of Madrid on the other. The Catalans have acquired already the special characteristics of a hard-working and very advanced race; and it may be affirmed that the native of Paris, neat and businesslike as she is, is not more so than the woman of Barcelona, either as regards cleanliness, or diligence, or the conviction, if I may so express it, that work is a duty and a privilege. She differs from the Parisienne in being less wily and engaging with customers, if she is behind the counter, or in gaining a tip for any service she may render. But good order, the charming simplicity and neatness of her dress, a business-like and practical turn of mind, aspiration to comforts gained by the sweat of her brow, and a fund of healthy independence born of her devotion to work, make the ouvrière or manufacturing hand of Cataluña a woman of a late and civilized age in the full signification of the word. On the other hand, the

woman of the town quarter of Madrid, a much more interesting subject for the artist, is a survival of the past, a relic of old Spain; hers is the face which adorns fans and tambourines: she is the model that is used by students of manners, such as Mesonero Romanos or Perez Galdos. Descendant of the majas and manolas of old, the "chula" cultivates as an art an unabashed freedom of speech, a hasty and reckless temper, an intensity of feeling, and all the fervor of unbridled passions. The chula's" hands are as free and ready as her tongue, and she is capable of picking a quarrel with the sun itself; she is also capable of giving the clothes she has on to relieve misery. Noble and beautiful traits alternate in her with others equally coarse, shameless and barbarous. When the former are in the ascendant it is impossible not to love her. The conversation of the "chula" is full of wit, her actions are always determined by and spring directly from the heart or imagination; she never calculates, and her unreflecting brightness is as attractive as the spontaneity, mischievousness, and amusing sallies of a little child.

The "chula" is generous and disinterested, and does not fear to undergo cruel privations and incessant sacrifices to secure the comfort or satisfy the caprices of the object of her affections. As the bursts of feeling in the "chula" are not governed by reflection, it often happens that she wastes treasures of affection and passion on the most undeserving of mankind. With the labor of her hands, sometimes even with the wages of her shame, the "chula" often feeds and clothes some bullfighter out of work or some loathsome and degraded ruffian. Madrid abounds in couples, of whom the man lives only to satisfy his low and vicious tastes, passing his mornings in bed and his evenings at the café, continually drunk, and with the cigarette always between his lips, while the woman works like a slave so that her despicable companion may not lack money to enable him to continue his life of debauchery and idleness. It seems scarcely necessary to add that the "chula's" affection leads her to such strange extremes that, though irritable and proud with others, from her lover she puts up with blows and all sorts of bad treatment; it would almost appear as if even humiliation and suffering bound her to him who in

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flicted it. After a heating from her sweetheart," the chula" appears as affectionate as a turtle dove, and as docile as a lamb.

Needless to say, the "chula" is not exactly what may be called a model of strictness and austerity. Indeed, the ranks of prostitution draw many of their recruits from this class, from which, together with the lower orders of Andalusia, are chosen the Spanish bayaderes, who are known as singers of "flamenco" songs and dancers of flamenco" dances. 66 Nevertheless, to return to the general conception on which this essay is founded, I maintain that the "chula" (woman) is better than the "chulo" (man), in spite of all her faults. Warm-heartedness and acuteness, enthusiasm and disinterestedness, sometimes save her from infection in the polluted atmosphere in which she lives, and make her a brave and honest woman, while preserving all the impulsiveness and "gracia" of her class. Even after being dragged through the mire the "chula," who deserves the name, does not entirely lose a certain element of attractiveness and romance, which is not to be found among such persons in Paris, where vice is purely a business transaction. If heart and feeling are required, they may be found in the "chula" of Madrid. If this woman were only capable of education! . . . But if she were capable of education (the difficulty crops up again) she would no longer be a "chula, and her lively sparkle would be gone.

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The Andalusian resembles the woman of the lower orders of Madrid, but she is more timid and religious, and in some towns like Seville and Cadiz, she is very orderly and attentive to her household affairs. The old stock prevails in the southern provinces; the cigar manufactories are the only industrial centres in Andalusia, and it is a well-known fact that the cigarreras form a separate and distinct class, differing from the ouvrière, who acquires imperceptibly a French type, or at least loses the picturesque air which is preserved in all its brilliancy by the cigarrera. Graceful descriptions of the cigarmakers of Seville have been written, representing them with bunches of roses in their hair, and their turned-up sleeves showing their olive-skinned arms, with their animated and free chatter, and their noisy and brisk activity. Nowadays when the notorious pronunciamientos are becom

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ing things of the past, riots among the cigarreras are frequent, and the office of manager of the manufactories of Seville or Madrid can only be held by a man of great coolness and energy. "These won en, the head of the manufactory at Madrid remarked to me the other day, are at the bottom deserving of sympathy; they have the best of hearts, and by good treatment you can do what you like with them; but their sense of justice is so fully developed and strong, that I pity that manager whom they should have reason to consider as unjust. They are capable of tearing him to pieces in a moment of excitement."

All the ouvrière class in Spain, as well as the cigar-makers, have been somewhat bitten with the Republican ideas so well fitted to flatter in theory that thirst of justice which is distinctive of the lower orders. But, by a seeming inconsistency which may easily be explained, the Republican ouvrière in Spain continues to be superstitiously religious, attends special services, and lavishes attentions on the saints and virgins of her choice; she preserves her respect for kings, for whom she conceives a loyal sentiment bordering on fanaticism if ever she receives from them some mark of kindness, or insignificant sign of good will and care. The Spanish woman of the lower orders preserves forever the recollection of kindness done to her, and, in short, of any trait of generosity and good feeling, even though no profit result to herself. The most insignificant actions, if they bear the impress of a kindly nature, move her to an incredible degree. Last year in one of the streets of Zaragoza, I noticed a blind man, who was groping among the stones of the road in search of a copper piece which he had dropped. I pitied the poor man, and taking a silver piece of the value of a franc from my hand-bag, I gave it to him. At the same moment I was surprised to hear a chorus of blessings showered on me by a group of poor women. I could not help laughing a franc is such a small matter to provoke so much enthusiasm. I reflected afterward, and saw that the approval expressed by these women resulted from the fact that my conduct, though in no degree surprising, fell in with their inmost sentiments: each one of them would gladly have given the beggar a franc, or even more had she been able.

One of the most strongly marked types of women in Spain is the native of the Basque Provinces. She differs in every respect from the Spanish woman as imagined by foreigners, passionate, languid, and Eastern; on the contrary, the woman of Biscay, Guipuzcoa, and Álava is a figure with severe, one might almost say, harsh and rugged outlines, the most moral and Christian woman in all Europe. I appeal to social statistics, and I think they will not belie me. The Basque race is a race apart in Spain itself; it is believed on good grounds that the Basques are descended, if not from aborigines in the rigorous sense of the word, at least from the first tribe that migrated, ages ago, to the Iberian Peninsula. It is beyond question that the ethnical and moral characteristics of the Euskarian race mark it off from the other races of Spain, and it has no affinity with the inhabitants of the rest of the Cantabrian littoral in spite of the similarity of country and climate. Whereas the Asturian or Galician woman presents a rounded contour and a soft type of features, the Basque is hard and angular in outline, and unyielding obstinacy is written on her brow. Cleanly, industrious, and grave, her purity seems temperamental, for, as I have often heard it stated, many Euskarian peasant women are completely impervious to the tender passion. They marry because they regard it as a duty to have a household, and they aspire to maternity, which they do not admit outside the marriage bond. Their fidelity and purity, the merit of which I will leave moralists to discuss, are absolute. It is true that the general standard of morality in the Basque country is much higher than in the rest of Spain, and I need not repeat that to hope for very pure women where men are extremely immoral is signally inconsistent. Fifteen years ago the sister provinces still retained a lofty patriarchal stamp, a spice of Homeric virtue which did not prevent them, lying as they do so near to France, from being the most advanced and industrious part of our country, with the exception of Cataluña. The upholders of the "fueros" or legislative independence of the region assert that, since the termination of the Civil War, and the suppression of these venerable privileges, the Basque country is, little by little, losing the purity of its manners, the simplicity and innocence of its character,

and all its home-grown virtues. There is one more sacrifice that new Spain has been obliged to offer up on the altar of constitutional liberty. The Basque Provinces and Navarre have always been the hotbed of the Carlist rebellion; and those who are well acquainted with that country state that it would not surprise them if the insurrection broke out again and further bloodshed ensued, so tenacious are the Basques of the unyielding religious spirit and of federal monarchy.

The Basque woman, so insensible and unbending in the field of passion, shows herself ardent in that of politics when she believes her traditional beliefs endangered. During the Civil War the Basque women gave proof of a heroisin equalled only by that of the Spartans. The mother of three sons, when the two elder had died on the battlefield, came forward and offered the youngest also," for the Liberals to kill." A whole volume might be filled with traits of sublime fanaticism manifested during the Carlist war.

In other parts of Spain women do not manifest the same enthusiasm in politics or coolness in love as in the Basque provinces. On the contrary, it may be affirmed that the passionate romance now exiled from the educated classes has taken refuge in certain Spanish provinces; and every day the newspapers contain an account of some double suicide, resembling in the circumstances that of Prince Rudolf of Austria, with the difference that its hero and heroine are a poor soldier and a seamstress or a washerwoman. Only among the people is found the man who binds himself to his sweetheart with the many folds of the Spanish sash, and, carefully wrapping her skirts about her lower limbs, with a kind of posthumous jealousy, that modesty may not be offended in the death-struggle, first sends a bullet to her heart and then blows out his own brains.

In sketching rapidly a map of Spain arranged according to the various types of women, I should wish to mark them out in three or four principal divisions. A certain analogy exists between the Basques and the Catalans, in spite of the impassive nature and the respect for tradition of the former. Between the Andalusian and Madrid divisions the resemblance is very close. If it were my purpose to seek in a forgotten past the reason for this similarity

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in character, I should say that it reveals the preponderance of the Semitic or African element. The woman of the central plateau, the Castilian, is a mixture of the Celtic with the original Iberian race. spite of marked differences, some similarity exists between her and the Galician or Basque. The purely Celtic division, namely, the Asturias and Galicia, which so closely resembles the Basque Provinces in its physical characteristics and its climate, produces, thanks to the difference of race, a female who forms a complete contrast to her Basque sister. The Galician or Asturian woman is tender hearted, politics do not trouble her, and she cares nothing for the constitution, or whether Don Carlos or Alfonso XII. be king. Devoted to her children, she would not think of sacrificing them in the struggle for a social Utopia, and as regards susceptibility to the tender passion, it is sufficient to state that it rarely happens that a Galician peasant-woman goes to the altar without having already a family. We must not omit to state that, carrying out the ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the peasant women of this Celtic division, though free in manners before marriage, are afterward generally faithful to their husbands.

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Throughout the length and breadth of Spain the women help the men in agricultural labor, for the equality of the sexes, though denied by the written code and in social spheres in which life is idle, is established by the poverty of the peasant, the journeyman, and the farmer. own country, Galicia, women in delicate health, or with children at the breast, may be seen digging the ground, sowing the maize and wheat, and cutting the grass for the cattle. This severe labor raises no protest among the profound theorists who, on the least attempt to widen the sphere of women's activity in other directions, exclaim, full of pious horror, "Women ought to confine themselves to the bosom of their families, for their sole purpose in life is to fulfil the duties of wife and mother." The poor home of the needy peasant woman, where food and firing are wanting, and where the rain and storm beat in, is almost always empty. The mistress has been emancipated by a liberator, eternal, merciless, and deaf--Necessity.-Fortnightly Review.

MADAME FRANCE AND HER BRAV' GÉNÉRAL.

BY W. T. STEAD.

wrote:

"The will of the people, if it presumes to go against the law, is that of a drunken pasha; the duty of a Republican magistrate is to crush it."

THE political problem in France is one Boulanger's election for Paris, when he of deep interest beyond the borders of the Republic. For it raises anew in the Centennial of the Revolution the great question whether there is or whether there can be in a democratic State any interdict imposed or maintained upon the absolute authority of universal suffrage. In England, politicians have accustomed themselves to regard the clearly expressed will of a majority of the electors as decisive. With us the phrases popular sovereignty, the will of the people, self-government, have come to mean in practice this: that there is no appeal either in the law or the constitution from the will of a majority of the electors as shown at a general election. The British householder is as absolute as the Tzar. As long as he is in doubt, other powers exist. When he has made up his mind, they simply disappear. The utmost that the most fervent partisans of the House of Lords now venture to maintain is that the Second Chamber may interpose for a season in order to place beyond all doubt the fact that the electorate has really made up its mind. But when that mind is made up beyond all doubt its decisions are obeyed.

General elections have come to be more and more of plebiscites, and the voice of the people, as audible at such elections, has come to be regarded as the only English equivalent of the voice of God. The people are a law unto themselves. No law is superior to their will. Their votes Their votes are the source of law. When they vote it is in order to declare what laws shall be abrogated or what laws shall be passed. It is becoming more and more impossible, therefore, for Englishmen even to imagine that the will of the voting majority for a time being can be or ought to be subjected to any limitation.

In France, however, the home of the Revolution, where men deal much more than they do in England in the magniloquent phrases which assert the uncontrolled sovereignty of the nation, the plebiscitary doctrine is still regarded by many politicians as a damnable heresy. This was bluntly expressed by M. Reinach in the République Française, after General

The conception of the existence of a magistrate upon whom was imposed the duty of crushing the will of the people is so novel to the average British elector that he will probably be revolted at it. Yet we have only to turn to the United States to find in full force and practical operation a number of effective checks and limitations upon the national will-checks and limitations which impose upon the Republican magistracy in certain contingencies the duty which M. Reinach declares is imposed on the French Presidency. The will of the people, no matter how clearly expressed in plebiscitary elections, cannot effect any alteration in the American Constitution until certain rigorously imposed conditions, entailing the delay of years and the patient and prolonged verification of the force and persistency of the national will, have been scrupulously complied with. No majority, no matter how decisive, of the American people can place a law on the Statute-book which conflicts with the written constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court; whereas, in England, there is no law and no institution which cannot be thrown into the meltingpot as soon as the British householder has had an opportunity of clearly making known his will. The only check upon the impatient will of the democracy is the Septennial Act. Once in seven years the householder becomes an autocrat, and those who are curious about such things will find in the agitation for shorter Parliaments the most significant and possibly the most dangerous symptom of the growth of what may be termed plebiscitary absolutism in Great Britain.

Lord Salisbury has frequently made known his anxiety for the adoption of American safeguards against the uncontrolled caprice of the voting majority. Democracies are, however, impatient of restrictions which impede the making of

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