Ancient Spanish ballads; historical and romantic. Tr. by J. G. Lockhart, esq.

INTRODUCTION. XVUi book of the realm itself contained exact rules for the conduct of a constitutional insurrection to recall them to their duty, or to punish them for its desertion. Every order of society had, more or less directly, its representatives in the national council; every Spaniard, of whatever degree, was penetrated with a sense of his own dignity as a freeman, -his own nobility as a descendant of the Visigoths. And it is well remarked by an elegant historian of our day,* that, even to this hour, the influence of this happy order of things still continues to be felt in Spain, - where manners, and language, and literature, have all received indelibly a stamp of courts, and aristocracy, and proud feeling, - which affords a striking contrast to what may be observed in modem Italy, where the only freedom that ever existed had its origin and residence among citizens and merchants. The civil liberty of the old Spaniards could scarcely have existed so long as it did, in the presence of any feeling so black and noisome as the bigotry of modem Spain; but this was never tried; for down to the time of Charles V. no man has any right to say that the Spaniards were a bigoted people. One of the worst features of their modern bigotry - their extreme and servile subjection to the authority of the Pope - is entirely a-wanting in the picture of their ancient spirit. In the twelfth century, the Kings of Aragon were the protectors of the Albigenses; and their Pedro II. himself died, in 1213, fighting bravely against the red cross, for the cause of tolerance. In 1268, two brothers of the King of Castile left the banners of the Infidels, beneath which they were serving at Tunis, with eight hundred Castilian gentlemen, for the purpose of coming to Italy and assisting the Neapolitans in their resistance to the tyranny of the Pope and Charles of Anjou. In the great schism of the West, as it is called (1378), Pedro IV. embraced the party which the Catholic Church regards as schismatic. That feud was not allayed for more than a hundred years, and Alphonso V. was well paid for consenting to lay it aside; while, down to the time of Charles V., the whole of the Neapolitan princes of the House of Aragon may be said to have lived in a state of open enmity against the Papal See, - sometimes excommunicated for generations together, sel* Sismondi's Literature du Midi. 2