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 SPAIN SPAIN (LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE) 217 resigned on Jan. 2, 1874, when his ministry was found to be in the minority. On the following day Gen. Pavia, captain general of Madrid, dissolved the cortes with an armed force, and a new ministry was formed under the presidency of Gen. Serrano. Cartagena having been reduced shortly after his acces- sion to power, Serrano personally took the command against the Caiiists, who had taken Portugalete, and after considerable fighting with varying success around Sommorostro (March-May), Portugalete was retaken and Bilbao relieved. Marshal Concha, however, who succeeded Serrano in command of the army of the north, fell in battle before Estella in June, and in July Don Alfonso advanced with his Carlists as far as Cuenca. Puycerda, which the Carlists besieged, was relieved in August, and Iran in November. Serrano held the executive power until Jan. 9, 1875, when Alfonso, son of Isabella II., who had been pro- claimed king by the armies of the centre and north and in Madrid, landed in Spain. The new king took the field against the Carlists in person, but with slight success. Subsequently, however, operations were resumed with great- er vigor, and the Carlists were repulsed from St. Sebastian and before Vitoria, and forced back beyond the Ebro, Catalonia was almost entirely freed from them, and the capture of Seo de Urgel with its garrison (October) proved a demoralizing defeat. Many Carlist chiefs sub- mitted, others fled into France, and still others were shot as traitors. At the close of 1875 bhe Carlist insurrection seemed to be on the )int of succumbing to the forces of Alfonso [II. ; but an empty treasury, the troubles caused by the intransigentes and by the acri- monious disputes of the different political fac- tions in Madrid, and the still unsuppressed re- bellion in Cuba, give little hope of a peaceful reign to the new king. Among the best his- )ries of Spain are those of Mariana (1601 ; rith continuation by Sabau y Blanco, 20 vols., Eadrid, 1817-'22), Bossi (8 vols., Milan, 1821), ad Lembke and Schafer (in the collection of Heeren and Ukert, 3 vols., 1831-'67). The lost valuable illustrations of Spanish history in English are in the works of Prescott, Irving, ""icknor, Watson, Robertson, Coxe, Dunlop, >outhey, Stirling, and Ford. Some of the more recent works on Spain are the following : Coello, Resena geogrdftca, geoldgica y agrwola de EspaUa (Madrid, 1864) ; F. Garrido, La Espaila contempordnea (Barcelona, 1865); H. M. Willkomm, Das pyrenaische Halbinselland (Leipsic, 1866) ; G. de Lavigne, DEspagne et le Portugal (Paris, 1867) ; Ch. de Mazade, Les revolutions de VEspagne (Paris, 1869); H. Se- goillot, Lettres sur VEspagne (Paris, 1870); Augustus J. C. Hare, " Wanderings in Spain " (London, 1872); Baron Ch. Davillier, PEs- pagne, illustrated by Dore (4to, Paris, 1873 ; English translation by J. Thompson, London and New York, 1875-'6) ; V. Cherbuliez, IJEs- pagne politique, 1868-1873 (Paris, 1874) ; N. L. Thieblin, " Spain and the Spaniards " (Lon- don, 1873 ; Boston, 1875) ; H. W. Baxley, " Spain : Art Remains and Art Realities ; Painters, Priests, and Princes" (2 vols. 8vo, London, 1875) ; and H. J. Rose, " Untrodden Spain and her Black Country, being Sketches of the Life and Character of the Spaniards of the Interior" (2 vols. 8vo, London, 1875). SPAIN, Language and Literature of. The Span- ish language sprang from the vulgar Latin, which was introduced into Spain with Roman domination, and became prevalent throughout the peninsula. But vestiges still remained of ancient dialects and of idioms introduced by Phoenicians, Greeks, and Carthaginians, who founded colonies on the coast. The invasion of the Goths soon determined the corrup- tion of the Latin ; but as the conquerors had already been in extensive communication with the Romans, the corruption was not so com- plete as in some other provinces of the empire overrun by northern nations. Even after the Gothic rule was firmly established, the bishops of Rome retained much influence in the gov- ernment, and through them the distance be- tween the conquerors and the conquered was greatly lessened ; and when they finally co- alesced, the language of the latter prevailed, though somewhat disfigured. At the time of the Saracen invasion this adulterated Latin was the tongue in common use. After the destruction of the Gothic empire the national language was preserved in the fastnesses of the north, but in so corrupt a state that in the 9th century the Latin of books was no longer intelligible to any but the churchmen. This uncultured idiom was extended gradual- ly by conquest to the parts occupied by the Moors, where it acquired many Arabic words, which contributed materially to its vigor and richness. Such was the process of formation of the Castilian tongue, in earlier times called the Romance vulgar. The Latin continued to be the language of the cloisters and the colleges, and in it were written most of the important works down to the 15th century, when it was superseded by the language of the people. The following are some of the more important changes in the formative part of the language. The vowels e and o of the accented penultima frequently develop into the diphthongs ie and ue, as in tiempo, "bueno, fuerte, puente, from tempus, bonum, fortem, pontem. Harsh consonants show a tendency to soften, and combinations to change into single consonants, as in abrir, saber, digo, agua, edad, from aperire, sapere, dico, aqua, cstatem. Such combinations as cl, fl, pi, &c., are often changed into the liquid II, as in Have, llama, llano, from clams, flamma, planus ; ct passes into ch, as in noche, dicho, from noctem, dictum; initial f is changed into mute h, as in hacer, from facere. These mutations occur in the accented penultima, and disappear gen- erally with a transposition of accent, or with the addition of one or more syllables, as in