Biscayan by the same standard as the Andaluz, is as sensible as it would
be to compare the Irish squatter with Cornish fisher-folk, or the
peasants of Wilts and Surrey with the Celtic races of the West Highlands
of Scotland, or even with the people of Lancashire or Yorkshire.

Nor is it possible to speak of Spain as a whole, and of what she is
likely to make of the present impulse towards national growth and
industrial prosperity, without remembering that her population counts,
among its rapidly increasing numbers, the far-seeing and business-like,
if somewhat selfish, Catalan, with a language of his own; the dreamy,
pleasure-loving Andaluz; the vigorous Basque, whose distinctive language
is not to be learned or understood by the people of any other part of
Spain; the half-Moorish Valencian and the self-respecting Aragonese, who
have always made their mark in the history of their country, and were
looked upon as a foreign element in the days when their kingdom and that
of Leon were united, under one crown, with Castile. It was only after
Alfonso XII. had stamped out the last Carlist war that the ancient
_fueros_, or special rights, of the Basque Provinces became a thing of
the past, and their people liable to conscription, on a par with all the
other parts of Spain.

Every student of history knows that the era of Spain's greatness was
that of _Los Reyes Católicos_, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of
Aragon, when the wonderful discovery and opening up of a new world made
her people dizzy with excitement, and seemed to promise steadily
increasing power and influence. Everyone knows that these dreams were
never realised; that, so far from remaining the greatest nation of the
Western World, Spain has gradually sunk back into a condition that
leaves her to-day outside of international politics; and that, with the
loss of her last colonies overseas, she appears to the superficial