The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-07-05
STAINS DECADENCE.
The Country To-Day Almost Worn
 Out Land

Spain had yielded to your corresponds ent a singularly fair knowledge of Spain, its condition generally consid- cred, and the various classes of that railing and unhappy kingdom. But the latest visit opened up from the inside the desperate state of matters in this land of the past These words, the past" are used advisedly and with all sober. sad truth. Spain is the one country of Europe that has not yet emerged from the ignorance, the le- thargy and the misery of the last and worst days of mediaevatism. Church and state, oligarchy and monarchy be- long to the elsewhere vanished past. Time and leisure are both demanded to carry the thoughtful student beyond the glamour of romantic traditions and the moving tales of great adventures, and to lead away from the bewitching survey of Escurial, Giralda and Alham- bra to the patient and thorough inves- tigation of the actual life of the present hour to the state of the country as a visible fact, the condition of the upper classes and the sullen endurance and the manifold sufferings of the masses, among whom to-day are found the best elements for a possible regeneration of the debased and steadily retrograding | nation. f
 | Studied thus quietly, and with an honest wish to see straight and learn | facts, what Is Spain? You may pack it all into one phrase-a wornout land.
 | The old impulsive and formative powers and forces, not only of the glo- rious days of Ferdinand and Isabella, but also of the much later times of the great Peninsular wars of Napoleon and | Wellington, are worn out. The old mo- bility, naughty and ceremonious, but honorable and honest the old military leaders, brave and self-denying; the 1 far-sighted statesmen and the church dignitares, able and learned, are worn out You ask for them in vain. Here and there one may be heard of; but he is lonely relic of the vanished order; and, weary and disgusted, the far-sep- arated and self -distrusting remnant do not assert themselves, and would affect naught if they did. The day of the best is gone; the day of the bureau has | come.
 The old realities of fife are worn out. | Of course if you are simply rushing from point to point on business or on i pleasure bent you will not and you cannot reach these facts. The business mans hurry from town to town; the curious tourist seeking out 'the sights" the historian, pursuing the , ,,oo h pf ha Goth ho tho Cn | tilian; the artist and the virtuoso loi- tering about seductive Toledo, hoary Cordova or fascinating Granada, may come and go oftentimes and fail to req lize the deep, far-reaching changes that have come into the national life.
 You cannot miss this sad feature when you hear from the lips of consuls, mis- sionaries, teachers, bankers, and above all, from some of the sad-hearted rem- nant, what their own eyes have marked going on steadily and what they know from years of residence. The forms of 1 better days remain; the reality is largely lost The old country life, the old guardianship of the chieftain for his retainers the generous sympathy between landowner and tenant the grave, but sincere acknowledgment of the obligations of rank and property
 with the related and produced loyalty and trust and affection of the tenant and the dependent for his chief. are now not the rule, but the very rare ex. | ception. Absenteeism and exactior have wrought here even worse result. than the same baleful facts did in Ire | land. To great degree the old patrio
 tism is worn out. The literal provin. cialism, which has always been more ol less marked in Spain, and has ever beer a cause of weakness, the active sec.
 tionalism which leads 0 man to say and to feel-"I am Gallician," or '.. am Valencian," or "a Castilian.' rather than q am a Spaniard." i. 1 strongly marked at this time. Tn, successive revolutions, the dynastic
 changes, above all the mercenary "bu
 reau' at Madrid, and the merciless shipments of death doomed conscript. to the famine and fever graves in Cubs and the Philippines have, to a large | degree, killed out the old national spir it. The old neighhorly and social faitl is worn out. Man has but little faith il
 man. Distrust, suspicion and a sterr sullenness have grown sadly common.
 1 To drive over the old and now scarce | passable roads, at times to cross afoo
 the hills, to stop at the wayside inns ol | to spend few days on an estate or E farm, gives you the opportunity of see
 ing what neglect, increasing povert, and general unrest are producing ir many portions of a land that might b, 1 made to teen with plenty. The sum O.
 such study may be summed up in tn, two words, "waste stretches" Some q
 us know full well what the worn-ou | lands were, often seen in the old plan. | tation days. But never so melanchol, specimens were here seen, nor can now anywhere else in Europe be seen. q, you very often must look on in Spain Districts which were very gardens ir 1 the days of the busy Saracen. am which were abundantly fertile for man, after centuries, are to-day practically wastes, yielding here and there a scan herbage for few weeks in spring f, the lean sheep that range over the al
 most bare earth. North of Madrid around Cordova, to the east of Seville | and about Granada, Heres and Cadiz exhaustion and barrenness meet th, eve on all sides. It is not change o 1 climate. It is not that the soil will no
 bear if cared for. Neglect, thriftIess
 ness, abuse of the soil, ignorance of tn, ! most elementary farming, pride, self