Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/286

 "Behold us, truly if we be not like the people mentioned in the Bible,—seated in the shadow of death,—we are at least seated in the shadow of tradition. In Spain the tradition is that at the top there should be a few learned men, a few enlightened priests and bishops, a few men of great talent, and then comes a profound drop to the middle plane where there are those who know but a little and read less, and below that the frightful abyss of ignorance in which the untaught millions—seven tenths of the nation—are resigned to live without the light of knowledge." Another lover of the Spanish people says:—

BRED IN ANDALUSIA

"It is pitiful to see the vivacious look upon their faces and to feel behind it the absence of that spirit of inquiry which elsewhere animates the lower classes. Here in Spain the cerebral instrument is a superior one, yet it has been deemed no more worthy of cultivation than this marvelous soil, so many acres of which lie unfilled in Andalusia and the Castilles." And as the sun sinks low and darkness creeps across the Vega, we ask if there be no promise of better