they cannot be amended without tearing the book to pieces. For this reason
I have confined myself to the correction of the most obvious and flagrant
errors, and can only hope the kindly reader will pass over with an
indulgent smile the rapid judgments, the hot prejudices, the pitiless
condemnations, the lyric eulogies, born of an honest enthusiasm and
unchecked by the reserve which comes of age and experience. I venture to
hope, though with some anxiety and uncertainty, that the honest enthusiasm
may itself be recognized, as well as the candor which the writer tried to
preserve in speaking of things which powerfully appealed to his loves and
his hates.

I therefore commit this book to the public once more with its
imperfections on its head; with its prophecies unfulfilled, its hopes
baffled, its observations in many instances rendered obsolete by the swift
progress of events. A changed Europe--far different from that which I
traversed twenty years ago--suffers in a new fever-dream of war and
revolution north of the Pyrenees; and beyond those picturesque mountains
the Spanish monarchy enjoys a new lease of life by favor of circumstances
which demand a chronicler of more leisure than myself. I must leave what I
wrote in the midst of the stirring scenes of the interregnum between the
secular monarchy and the short-lived Republic--whose advent I foresaw, but
whose sudden fall was veiled from my sanguine vision--without defense or
apology, claiming only that it was written in good faith, from a heart
filled with passionate convictions and an ardent love and devotion to what
is best in Spain. I recorded what I saw, and my eyes were better then than
now. I trust I have not too often spoken amiss of a people whose art,
whose literature, whose language, and whose character compelled my highest
admiration, and with whom I enjoyed friendships which are among the
dearest recollections of my life.