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Doubtless the French at their best come nearest to the Spanish in their respect for one another, just as the North-American Yankees are furthest from them. The French are the most humane people in the world, because the most tolerant; and ever so much less cruel in temperament than the Spanish. But their cochonnerie, the ribaldry of their burlesques, the wretched homes, the open and stinking conveniences of the capital of civilization, decency forbids in Madrid.

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With all that, however, let a caveat be entered. The Spanish hold something which is increasingly valuable in our modern human society because it is all the while getting rarer—the gold of good manners. That is true, and must remain after all adverse criticism of the race. But the Spanish have a negative characteristic which through the centuries has outraged the fellow-feelings of the rest of humanity, and that is cruelty, a lust for torture.

The Auto de Fe, the ordeals of the Inquisition dungeons, these in the past; the survival of the bull ring and the plaza de gallos, these to-day and, remarked at all times, the Spanish inhumanity to horses, seem to outweigh good manners. And the behavior of the crowd about the bull ring—hideously burlesque and unrestrained, may perhaps have marked the crowds who in Seville in the sixteenth century watched brother men burn to death for the good of the Holy Father at Rome and the greater glory of God.