Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/285

 FROM THE BRIDGE

must have been at one time a pretty country seat. She was sweetly pretty, poorly but neatly dressed. The mother's gown of faded black and her pinched and worn expression told of that war with poverty which the great mass of the Spanish people must ever wage and, alas, so frequently in vain. Yet Spanish poverty is always picturesque—to-day, as in Murillo's time. But with this poverty there marches hand in hand the awful scepter "Ignorance." Of Spain's population of about seventeen millions, more than two thirds can neither read nor write. And as returning to the city we again let our eyes wander over the surrounding valleys; let me repeat the words uttered by a Spanish priest:—