Travellers complain somewhat bitterly of the increase in the numbers and the importunity of beggars in Spain; but wherever monks abound, beggars also abound, and the long-unaccustomed sight of the various religious habits naturally brings with it the hordes of miserable objects who afford opportunities for the faithful to exercise what they are taught to believe is charity—loved of God. This, however, is more especially the case in Granada, or those favoured spots affected by the rich tourist, who has not always the same opinion about indiscriminate charity as the native Spaniard. In old days, the wise policy of Charles III. had reduced very greatly the swarm of beggars. A certain number of terrible-looking objects—the fortunate possessors of withered limbs, sightless eyeballs, or other disqualifications for honest work—still ostentatiously displayed their badges of professional mendicancy, and lived, apparently quite comfortably, on the alms of the passers-by. But the enormous competition which has since sprung up in this "career" must interfere a good deal with its lucrativeness.

There is no poor law as yet in Spain. Philanthropy is left to voluntary effort; but the list of charities is so great, and so widely spread over the whole country, that one would think wholesale beggary would be superfluous. Madrid is divided into thirty-three parishes, each having a board of BeneficÉncias, the Government holding a fund which these boards administer. The Queen is the President of the whole. Each board has its president and vice-president—generally ladies of the aristocracy—a treasurer, vice-treasurer, secretary, and vice-secretary, and a body of visitors; accounts are rendered monthly to the governing board, whose vice-president presides in the name of the Queen. There are also the confraternities of St. Vincent and St. Paul, the members of which are gentlemen and ladies who work independently of each other. These, however, have no established funds, but depend on voluntary subscriptions and gifts. Both these associations visit the poor in their own homes. The Pardo and the San Bernadino are societies and homes for benefiting men, women, and children; they have been founded by ladies. For boys there is the School of the Sacred Heart, and the Christian Brothers. The School of San Ildefonso belongs to the Ayuntamiento, and has secular masters. There is a small asylum, with chaplaincy attached, for architects. Santa Rita is a reformatory for boys in Carabanchel, under a religious brotherhood. For girls there is the Horfino, the MercÉdes Asylum—founded in memory of and kept up by the rents of Queen MercÉdes—Santa Isabel and San Ildefonso, the French St. Vincent de Paul, San Blas, on the same lines as the MercÉdes, Santa Cruz, the Inclusa, and the Spanish Vincent de Paul. For fallen girls there are the Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament, the Ladies of the Holy Trinity, and the Oblates of the Holy Redeemer.

In all parts of the country branches of these or similar institutions abound. None are more liberal to the funds of these voluntary charities than the bull-fighters, who, if they make large fortunes, never forget the class from which they sprang, and are most generous in their donations. When occasion demands an extra effort, a fiesta is given at the Plaza de Toros, and the whole of the profits go to the charity for which it has been held. No doubt these schemes have their faults in operation, and GaldÓs in some of his popular novels does not fail to hold up—not exactly for admiration—the fashionable ladies who think it "smart," as we should say, to join these boards and societies, and talk with much unction of their public good works and the statistics of their pet societies, while neglecting the poor and the needy at their own doors, or trying to send into "Homes" those who have no desire or need to go there if a little Christian charity were only shown them by their neighbours. Nevertheless, there is a large amount of organised philanthropy in Spain to-day, and it appears to be of a wise and efficient kind. One should not forget to mention also the workshops for the lowest orders, established by the Salerian Fathers, to which the attention of the Government has been called by late events.

The general position of women in Spain and their influence in public life cannot be described as of an advanced order. As a rule, they take no leading part in politics, devoting themselves chiefly to charitable works, such as those already named. There is, as we have seen, a general movement for higher education and greater liberty of thought and action amongst women, and there is a certain limited number who frankly range themselves on the side of so-called "emancipation," who attend socialistic and other "meetings"—a word which has now been formally admitted into the Spanish language—and who aspire to be the comrades of men rather than their objects of worship or their playthings. But this movement is scarcely more than in its infancy. It must be remembered that even within the present generation the bedrooms allotted to girls were always approached through that of the parents, that no girl or unmarried woman could go unattended, and that to be left alone in the room with a man was to lose her reputation. Already these things seem to be dreams of the past; nor could one well believe, what is however a fact, that there were fathers of the upper classes in the first half of the last century who preferred that their daughters should not learn to read or write, especially the latter, as it only enabled them to read letters clandestinely received from lovers and to reply to them. The natural consequence of this was the custom, which so largely prevailed, of young men, absolutely unknown to the parents, establishing correspondence or meetings with the objects of their adoration by means of a complaisant doncella with an open palm, or the pastime known as pelando el pavo (literally plucking the turkey), which consisted of serenades of love-songs, amorous dialogues, or the passage of notes through the reja—the iron gratings which protect the lower windows of Spanish houses from the prowling human wolf—or from the balconies. Many a time have I seen these interesting little missives being let down past my balcony—how trustful the innocents were!—to the waiting gallant below, and his drawn up. Only once I saw a neighbour, in the balcony below, intercept the post, and I believe substitute some other letter. Cruel sport!

Perhaps born of this necessity of making acquaintance by fair means or foul comes the custom, which appears to savour of such grossly bad manners to us, of a man making audible remarks on the appearance of a girl he has never seen before as she passes him in the street. Ay! que buenos ojos! Que bonita eres! Que gracia tienes! and the like. Far from giving offence, the fair one goes on her way, perhaps vouchsafing one glance from those lovely eyes of hers, with only a sense that her charms have received their due tribute—not much elated, perhaps, but certainly by no means offended; nor, indeed, was offence intended. The fixed stare, which to us would mean mere ill-bred ignorance, is only another ordinary tribute to the passing fair one from the other sex.

Marriage customs have changed much in the last few decades, and even civil marriages are now not wholly unknown. In old days, if the ceremony was performed in church, the bride and all the ladies must be attired in black, for which reason the fashionable world established marriages in the house, where more brilliant costumes might be displayed. These generally take place in the evening, and the newly married couple do not leave the house, unless the new home happens to be close by. In any case, honeymoon tours are, or were, unusual. The velada is the ceremony in church, which must take place before the first child is born, to legalise the marriage, but it does not necessarily immediately follow the other ceremony. At it the ring is given. When the two ceremonies take place at the same time it must be in the morning, because the bride and bridegroom partake of the Holy Sacrament fasting. From the description of a boda in Galicia, in one of Pardo Bazan's novels, it would seem that the bride there wears white, even at the church. The wedding is a portentous affair, lasting all day from early morning, and the bride and bridegroom remain in the house. Fernan Caballero devotes some pages in Clemencia to showing how preferable is the Spanish custom of "remaining among friends" to that of the newly married couple, as she says, "exposing themselves to the jeers of postilions and stable-boys." Yet the English custom is in fact gaining ground, even in conservative Spain.

Although marriages are often made up by the parents and guardians, as in France, without any freedom on the part of the bride at least, custom or law gives the Spanish woman much more power than even in England. A girl desiring to escape from a marriage repugnant to her can claim protection from a magistrate, who will even, if necessary, take her out of her father's custody until she is of age and her own mistress. More than that, if a girl determines to marry a man of whom her parents disapprove, she has only to place herself under the protection of a magistrate to set them at defiance, nor have they the power to deprive her of the share of the family property to which by Spanish law she is entitled. I do not know if these things are altered now,—one does not hear so much of them,—but I know of several cases where daughters have been married from the magistrate's house against the wishes of their parents. In one case, the first intimation a father received of his daughter's engagement was the notice from a neighbouring magistrate that she was about to be married, and in another, a daughter left her mother's house and was married from that of the magistrate to a man without any income and considerably below her in rank. In all these cases, the contracting parties were of the upper classes.

While on this subject, I must mention what seems to us the barbarous manner in which infants are clothed and brought up, though the English fashions of baths, healthy clothing, and suitable food are now largely followed amongst the upper classes. When the King was still an infant a great deal of his clothing came from England, and he was brought up in the English method. This probably set the fashion, and the little ones playing in the Park now are much like those one is accustomed to see in London. But among the poor, and even some of the bourgeois class, the old insane customs prevail, and it is not surprising to hear that the death-rate among infants is extraordinarily high. From its birth the poor child is tightly wrapped in swaddling clothes, confining all its limbs, so that it presents the appearance of a mummy, swathed in coarse yellow flannel, only its head appearing. So stiffly are they rolled up that I have seen an infant only a few weeks old propped up on end against the wall, or in a corner, while the mother was busy. There is a superstition, too, about never washing a child's head from the day it is born. The result is really indescribable. When it is about two years old, a scab, which covers the whole head, comes off of its own accord, and after that the head may be cleansed without fear of evil consequences. Some English servants who have married in Spain set the example of keeping their infants clean, and, therefore, healthy, from the first, and, seeing the difference in the appearance of the children, a few Spanish women have followed suit; but it requires a good deal of courage to break away from old traditions and set one's face against the sacred superstitions of ages—and the mother-in-law!

One wonders, not that Spanish men grow bald so early, and not bald only, but absolutely hairless, but that they ever have any hair at all; for after all the troubles of their infancy their heads are regularly shaved, or the hair cut off close to the skin all the summer. On the principle of cutting off the heads of dandelions as soon as they appear, as a way of exterminating them, the surprising thing is that the hair does not become too much discouraged even to try to sprout again. Funny little objects they look, with only a dark mark on the skin where the hair ought to grow in summer, and at most a growth about as long as velvet in the winter, until they are quite big boys! The girls generally wear their hair so tightly plaited, as soon as it is long enough to allow of plaiting at all, that they can scarcely close their eyes. Young Spanish women, however, have magnificent hair; though they, too, grow bald when they are old, in a way that is never seen in England.