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the southern districts of Valencia. Their prominent cheek bones, short face, dark eyes, coarse black hair, and tawny complexion, are not less decisive characteristics of the race, than is their laboriousness of disposition combined with keen relish for pleasures and amusements, or their lively, ardent, fickle temper, so strikingly associated with proverbial ferocity and promptness to revenge a wrong. Who, that is familiar with Spanish history and literature, can fail to recognise, by such traits, the blood of the invading Moors?

Elche is the land of palms. It is devoted to the cultivation of the date, which constitutes its chief article of commerce; and it seems to lie in the heart of a forest, as it were, of these picturesque denizens of the desert, which give yet another feature of Arabia to the aspect of Spain. A single glance at the palm groves of Elche is worth a volume of speculation on the subject of the style of architecture, which, from whatever cause, bears the name of Gothic; for its lofty columns and fanciful capitals and arches are the very image of the tall knotted trunks and culminating foliage of an avenue of date palms.-I was gazing upon these noble trees, and on their rich clusters of fruit bound up in sheaths of fanlike leaves, and reflecting on the resemblance I have indicated, when my attention was called by an exhibition of juvenile festivity, which, as it was the casual result of the feelings

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and habits of the people, acquired from its very spontaneousness an additional charm.

A group of young peasant girls, but just emerging from childhood, and full of the careless gaiety and exuberant vivacity of a southern clime, were enjoying an hour of license on a festival day, in an open court yard where I passed. Children as they were, and too young for suspicion of wrong, they readily admitted the attentions of two strangers, who accosted them in terms of interest and courtesy; and entered into conversation with us, if conversation it could be called, with all the native sprightliness of the light-hearted Valencians. I say, if conversation it could be called; for I confess it demanded no slight exercise of ingenuity to comprehend the language they spoke. It was the dialect of the country, a combination of Castilian with the old Provençal, which the French brought into Catalonia when they conquered the country from the Moors, and which spread with the progress of the Christian arms into Valencia. This idiom sounds harsh and repulsive in the mouths of the Catalans; but is liquid, delicate, and soft when articulated by Valencians, and especially by the musical lips of their lively women. But little as we could comprehend of their youthful accents, they, of course, found no difficulty in apprehending the bonbons we offered them, nor in understanding our wish, that they should continue their amusements undisturbed by our temporary presence.

It was then, for the first time, that I realized the difference between dance, when it is the tutored result of elaborate discipline, as with us,—and the same thing, when it grows up with the growth, and is, like vernacular language itself, the spontaneous acquisition of the social freedom of childhood. I had seen Taglioni delighting the fashionable habitués of the Opéra Français with pirouettes that dazzled the eye, and all those miraculous achievements of saltatory skill, which awaken the despairing admiration of the badauds of Paris. In the theatres of Madrid, I had seen the choicest pupils of art, displaying to royal eyes the magic figures of the bolero, in movements of grace, which defy all powers of description. In Seville, in Cadiz, in Granada, how often had the click of the castanet and the tinkling of the light guitar sounded in my ear, from the stage or the patio, as the animated Andalusians joined in the mazes of the fandango.

Such sounds as when, for sylvan dance prepared,
Gay Xeres summons forth her vintage band,

When for the light bolero ready stand

The majo blithe with the gay maja met,

He, conscious of his broidered cap and band,

She, of her netted locks and light corsette,

Each tiptoe perched to spring, and shake the castanet.

But, while the national dances of Castile, La Mancha, and Andalusia as much exceeded the French in gracefulness, in beauty, nay in delicacy,

notwithstanding the current prejudices respecting the bolero,-as much as light is lovelier than darkness,―here was something more enchanting yet; for the elastic muscles and free limbs of the children before me, as they joined in the dances of their country, did indeed form the very 'poetry of motion.' And it was nature herself, fresh in her unvarnished loveliness, more agreeable than any thing which mere art accomplishes, just as the carnation upon the cheek of beauty, laid on by the 'cunning hand' of youthful innocence, outshines the divinest limning of a Guido or a Titian.

The Valencians have the reputation, and with just cause, of being the most graceful dancers in all Spain. Many of them gain a livelihood in the other provinces of the Peninsula, by the exercise of their national address and agility, and return to their native villages to expend the earnings of their skill in the dance, just as the Galicians do after devoting so many years of life to the business of porterage and water-selling. The little girls, whom I was observing, were specimens of the proficiency in this respect, which seems to be indigenous to Valencia. They performed a great variety of dances, sometimes to the singing of one of their number, but always accompanied in some simple mode by the dancers themselves. Thus, in one dance, they employed small rods or wands, which they struck together to mark the time,-sometimes advancing, sometimes receding,-now in slowly mea

sured cadence, and then again with extreme rapidity, yet never failing to beat in perfect accordance with each other and with the notes of the air. Pleasing as this was to the eye and ear, another dance was not less so, in which they imitated the clicking of the castanets with astonishing accuracy, by snapping their fingers together, so as perfectly to mark the time.

In a seguidilla, sung by one of the children, I recognized the words of an old Moorish ballad.

Zayda dear, I do confess

No Moorish maid excels thee;
Youth and grace and loveliness,
All this, I know, adorns thee,
All this, I know, adorns thee:-
Song, that soothes and warms the heart,
Is heard when Zayda warbles;
Charms, that pass all human art,
Are scen, when Zayda dances;
Oh! such is lovely Zayda,
Oh! such is lovely Zayda!

Magic dwells upon thy tongue,

Thy words are pearls of beauty,
Darts of death are from thee flung,
In all thy kindling glances;
Death, death, is in thy glances:
Wedding thee were perfect bliss,
And losing thee, I perish;
Oh! if Zayda felt but this,

To live would be to love her
;
To live and love thee, Zayda,
To live and love thee, Zayda

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