To such
base uses may we come at last. Yet Seville basks in the sun and smiles on
the flashing waters of the Guadalquivir, and Cadiz sits serene upon the
green hillsides of San Sebastian, just as if nothing had ever happened;
neither the Barber and Carmen, nor Nelson and Byron; the past but a
phantom; the present the prosiest of prose-poems.
There are canny Spaniards even as there are canny Scots, who grow rich and
prosper; but there is never a Spaniard who does not regard the political
fabric, and the laws, as fair game, the rule being always "devil take the
hindmost," community of interests nowhere. "The good old vices of Spain,"
that is, the robbing of the lesser rogue by the greater in regulated
gradations all the way from the King to the beggar, are as prevalent and as
vital as ever they were. Curiously enough, a tiny stream of Hebraic blood
and Moorish blood still trickles through the Spanish coast towns. It may be
traced through the nomenclature in spite of its Castilian prefigurations
and appendices, which would account for some of the enterprise and activity
that show themselves, albeit only by fits and starts.
Chapter the Thirtieth
The Makers of the Republic--Lincoln, Jefferson, Clay and Webster--The
Proposed League of Nations--The Wilsonian Incertitude--The "New
Freedom"
I
The makers of the American Republic range themselves in two
groups--Washington, Franklin and Jefferson--Clay, Webster and Lincoln--each
of whom, having a genius peculiarly his own, gave himself and his best to
the cause of national unity and independence.
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