THOSE SPANIARDS AGAIN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 217, 22 June 1877, Page 11

THOSE SPANIARDS AGAIN.

— +-» — Whatever may be the origin of the phrase, Faire des chateaux en Bspagne, by which the French express our English idea of building castles in the air, many foundationless edifices have of late years been erected, whose locality would be most exactly indicated by it. Building aerial structures in Spain is, verily, a favourite occupation with certain classes amongst us ; and the reason is not far to seek. The country is as yet comparatively little known; travelling there, for some cause or other, is not the rage amongst Englishmen and Americans, so that the land has not become the highway for tourists, that a great part of Europe at present is, — a ciicumstance that, while it is provocative of unlimited tittle-tattle, leada to publicity, and affords

an opportunity of contradicting statements that are untrue or absurd. The Peninsula is, therefore, a safe site whereon to locate unsubstantial buildings ; and events said to have occurred th«re, in all probability, will meet with no refutation. Here, then, we find a "happy hunting-ground" for our popular preachers, our bigoted editors distracted for a paragraph, and our "third-rate Lucifers" grasping at an illustration that may add attractions to their " philosophy of the future," and season their speech until it shines bright and fecund as the primeval fire-mist itself, producing much that is apish. It may well be that calumnies concerning Catholic matters in Spain, which do not originate in that country, pass unchallenged, but their fate proves to be different if it chance that Spain itself has given them birth. Some little time ago, for example, a cock-and-bull story of the kind alluded to appeared in the Times, quoted from the Impartial of Madrid. It had not even the merit of originality, but seemed to us a coarse and shabby imitation of an idea charmingly worked out some years ago by a writer in the Cornhill Magazine, who adapted the characters and events of antique fairy-tales to our every-day life, and on such a plan composed various brief romances that were most poetical and graceful. The nonsense we refer to seemed also based upon such a foundation, for we well remember to have heard in extreme youth some nursery invention of a kindred nature ; but, far from being an improvement on this, it exhibited it in a degraded form, so that, instead of supplying a harmless amusement for little children, it presented a ribald idea to the minds of adults prepared by prejudice for its reception; for, surely, none others would have been at the trouble of listening to or repeating anything so Billy. However, a priest in Spain was involved in the matter, consequently it could not be too widely circulated, for it | seems settled that to detail marvellous cantrips attributed to an individual ecclesiastic iv some unknown retirement, and which no Catholic even dreams of concerniug himself about, is to deal a deadly blow to the Church. Hence, a humble jackdaw decked in peacock's feathers, (for as such, we have no doubt, certain of our commentators would regard this sacristan, clad like a devil who was sent by his cure" to frighten refractory parishioners and whom they shot in the effort,) received a place in the columns of the principal newspapers, and was d uly honoured on that elevated platform from which it is attempted to unlock the fetters that curb our minds, and set us free from what we know not ; — unconscious prisoners that we are, but the tranquil harmony of whose thoughts is threatened with that fate which overtook a power of dulcet sounds confined in the instrument of a certain artist who performed upon the bagpipes, " Until an arch wag Cut a hole in his bag, Which, alas ! put an end to the tune Too soon ! The music blew up to the moon !" But to return to our ecclesiastic. This time it seems such an individual really had a " local habitation and a name," and, of all those persons who were astonished at the deed related of him, none gaped more widely with amazement than did the worthy man himself. How the terms necessarily used in giving denial to the idiotic proceedings recorded may have consorted with the stateliness of the Spanish language, — a tongue of which it is said that it is suited only to conversation with the gods, — we know not. Here, however, it was employed for quite a mundane purpose, merely to rebuke the mendacious tricks of editors, for it is certain that the parish priest of Cervera, who was the ecclesiastic slandered, gave the matter a flat contradiction in a letter to the journal named El Siglo Futuro ; and this contradiction was followed up by sundry other newspapers, until the Impartial confessed to having been duped ; a confession, nevertheless, which perhaps will hardly save it from unpleasant consequences, as the Gorrespondencia, a Government organ, declares that the authors of the calumny are to be proceeded against by law.