want, but at the end of your traverse you are only about two miles forward on your journey from the point at which you began to descend. The effect is very curious as you proceed. You see the town not far off, but deep away down in the valley; you then lose sight of it, then shortly you see it again, then lose it again; and so on, catching it afresh and once more losing it, you think you have got another town, but strangely like the one before; at length you reach it and find Orduna.

Bilboa, the termination of the line, is a good, lively, neat town, made famous by the prolonged efforts to take it in the different Carlist wars. It has a population of about 30,000 inhabitants, some good churches and public buildings. The river Nervion runs through it to the Bay of Biscay, about eight miles away.

Bilboa is the centre of a great district, famous for centuries for its iron ore. The Romans dug iron out of the mountains, and I have seen their ancient workings. In Queen Elizabeth's time and onwards, the swords, made of the finest steel, were called bilbos, because the metal of which they were made was derived from the district about Bilboa. The mountains on the left of the Nervion are to a great extent masses of iron ore of excellent quality.

Several English companies work these quarries, and have railroads and piers for loading vessels, so as to utilize those wondrous hills. To explore the neighbourhood, and especially to examine one of these large undertakings, were among the objects of my visit.

After looking about Bilboa during the evening of my arrival, and taking a stroll in the Arenal, a little park beside the river which the inhabitants enjoy, I inquired respecting the means of getting to Portugaletta, at the river's mouth, where the Bilboa Iron Ore Company has its headquarters. I was told I should have no difficulty; there was a tram-car going every quarter of an hour or thereabouts, and for fourpence I should be carried the eight miles, first-class.

Here, I thought, is an advance for Spain. Twelve years ago to have posted it would have cost a pound. But now for fourpence I could be taken along in an elegant conveyance, and without further trouble Next morning I enjoyed it. I was happy enough to meet with good guidance. I was going to the house of a friend who is manager of the works. His house was across the river. I was asking the conductor in Spanish to shew me the proper place for me to descend to take a boat and cross, when a voice cried out from the second compartment that its owner was my friend's letter-carrier, and he would take me to the house. I had thus happily fallen into the best hands, and was freed from further concern.

I was received by my friends with a hearty English welcome. Other English friends I met there; and in looking over the works in the most beautiful weather, and enjoying the hospitality of my host and hostess, and the courteous interchange of thought with the rest of the company, a most happy day was spent.

In the afternoon my friends learned I could only give three days to

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the district, and named, with evident regret, that the day following there was to be a special scientific exploration of the neighbourhood of the works and a visit to a very remarkable cave (the Cava Madalena), high up a lofty mountain; and one of the party, a Yorkshire gentleman, was going. Moreover, in the afternoon it was a gala-day, and the country people would gather in their peculiar costume, and dance the ota, their provincial dance. To take advantage of this, it would be necessary to leave by train and go the thirteen miles of their line from the pier to the workings in the mountain, and remain to the day after next; but they would telegraph, that I should have every comfort provided at the works, and they would send me up in the special carriage in which the young King and his Minister went up to see the workings.

I decided for the exploration at once, and the telegram was sent that by the last train we should arrive. We started about half-past five. It was a glorious evening. The train was a special one, belonging to the company. The mountains during the whole thirteen miles are like those about Linton in North Devon. The arbutus grows on the mountain sides in forests; I have never seen it so fine, not even at Killarney; and abundance of oaks covered the hill-sides to heights they never grow at in England. Then the sea appeared every now and then, as at Sommorostro. The whole ride was wondrously beautiAnd here for months, through all this district, at opposite sides of the valleys, the contending armies had been watching each other, and plunging at each other like wild beasts.

ful.

All along from Bilboa I had noticed houses in ruins, and this was the case here also, and in one instance a church in the district we were traversing. I was shown the high ridge over which General Concha led his army, by which Bilboa had been relieved, and where the bones of skeletons are said still to be bleaching in the air unburied.

Oh, when shall we all learn to advance our objects only by righteousness and reason, and not by violence as beasts of prey! The country seems pacified and content at present, and the employment of thousands of the people by the foreign companies does much to contribute to that result. May it long continue!

I mentioned that a telegram was sent to the works to announce my coming with my companion, a portly Yorkshire gentleman; and somehow a mistake was made. The message actually sent was that they must prepare to receive a Protestant minister, Dr. Bayley, and his wife. This message had caused considerable dissension in the household to which we were going, and with some immediate neighbours. They had argued the subject as to whether priests ought to have wives, as their priests were not allowed to marry; and I was told that the general sentiment was that priests would be better married; though one lady objected that she could not confess to a married priest, she thought he would tell his wife. However, they were all very curious to see the minister's wife, and assembled round the carriage. I descended, and was respectfully and courteously received. When my portly friend

got out, who was certainly very little like a lady, there was a regular burst of merriment, and it was some little time before we could learn what it was all about. When we did, we joined in the laugh as heartily as any.

We received a very hearty welcome, and every hospitable attention during our stay in the mountains. We were taken over the district in which the company's workings are, and saw, not pits or beds of iron ore, dug for by sinkings more or less deep, but rocks of iron ore, hillsides of iron ore, some so rich that they glittered with metal, and this not in small, rare findings, but great masses of probably a ton weight. These have to be riven into smaller, convenient pieces, so that they can readily be sent down strongly constructed slides into the railway trucks below. Some which will be in the forthcoming Paris Exhibition are certainly far the finest we have ever seen. The scientific gentleman under whose testing directions the whole workings proceed, an admirable specimen of a North Briton, aided us by his intimate and critical knowledge greatly to enjoy the excursion. Figure to yourselves a mile long of such mountain masses of iron, and you will conceive this company's seat of operations. In the afternoon we went to see the peasants in gala, and came to the village, where perhaps a hundred and fifty young men and maidens were enjoying themselves in the dance to very homely music. Two solid, maturelooking dames standing under a tree, with each a tambourine, formed the band. Each young man had his partner, and they waltzed together to the music, then set themselves to each other, and flirted their fingers, and threw their arms about like garlands, making about eight changes of figure to each dance. This is their ota, and each province is said to have its special ota. They evidently enjoyed it much, and broke up long before daylight was over, and I was told every one would be at work in the morning at six, busy as ever. There was no drunkenness or skulking from work the next day. The Spanish labourer, as a rule, and especially the Basque mountain labourer, is a sober, willing, and industrious person. They wear grey caps, short jackets with smart colours, striped trousers, sashes or girdles containing pockets, and sandals with many or few and varied tapes or ribbons, and these, I was informed, indicate the province from which they come, each province having a different sandal; some had leathern shoes.

The next morning I saw them at their work, and very active, diligent, and resolute they seemed to be. About seven hundred men and women were as busy as bees at two or three separate workings,some preparing for blasting the rocks off in the evening, some splitting the larger pieces with chisels, wedges, and hammers, and the great bulk carrying the lumps in baskets with the old Latin name of cestus. I asked if I could not get a job amongst them, they all seemed so busy, and I was offered a cestus directly.

The scene was a very cheerful and pleasant one, and I enjoyed it much, until the train took myself and other friends down again through

the beautiful country to Portugaletta, where a dinner, and afterwards a concert of Spanish music, had been provided by my friends to close the day. We had a band of different varieties of the guitar, from three strings to twelve. Vocal music was given as well as instrumental,

and the evening was most enjoyable.

We had spent a charming day usefully, gathered a good stock of information, admired the lovely scenery traversed by the railway, and returned to the kind hospitality of our friends, and to spend the evening where the river and its shipping, with the Bay of Biscay making part of the magnificent scene, formed a view leaving nothing to be desired.

Many of the workmen whom we had seen so cheerful at their useful labour, not many months before were marching about with muskets, and at deadly strife with other Spaniards. They are still under priestly and superstitious influence, and fought for this, which they confound with religion, quite as much as they fought for their fueros.

These fueros are the old regulations of three provinces. They are partly respectable, and partly not very respectable. They consist, first, in freedom from compulsion to serve in the army; and, secondly, freedom to keep the tax on tobacco in its various forms for their own advantage, instead of its going to the general Government, as it does from every other portion of Spain.

The Spaniards, as they appeared to me from my daily observation (and my subsequent experience only confirmed the impression), are an amiable, friendly, courteous, intelligent, sober, diligent, good-natured people. The question then arises, How is it that such a people have continued so long the slaves of superstition, and the victims of old errors long gone by or fast dying away in other countries? The answer must be, I assume, that natural good, amiability of disposition, if not quickened by the love of truth, is blind, and easily imposed upon. It is too confiding to suspect wrong, and disinclined to scrutinize the opinions of those whom it respects.

Good-nature acquiesces in old customs, and is easily pleased with what is passable for the moment. Natural good, unregenerated, has self-hood at the bottom, and while it has a fair outside is easily seduced to evil. Of the Regent Orleans, who followed Louis XIV., it was said, “What a pity that so good-natured a prince should have been so bad a man!" Nero was so gentle as a young man as to excite universal esteem, but developed gradually such fiendishness as to make his name a by word for cruelty. So Spanish amiability was easily led to acquiesce in persecution, and to repel the inquiry, the light and the truth, which alone lead to progress. They still hug their old ways, and shut out free-trade by almost prohibition, forgetting that if I don't take what my neighbour has to spare, and which would suit me, he cannot take what I have to spare and would suit him, and by that act I impoverish both. Freedom for truth, freedom from prejudice, freedom for intercourse, for trade, freedom for opinion, science and intelligence, these are the Divine ways of blessing man, age, and nation. J. B.

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Miscellaneous.

For

THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST A And these contrasted traits are preserved NEW REVELATION.-One of the sub- in the different narratives with perfect jects assailed by modern criticism is mi- consistency, so that it is impossible to racles; and, as the greatest of miracles, doubt that the disciples believed that the resurrection of the Lord. The the Lord lived again after the Passion, assault has led to a closer examination and yet under new and glorious condiof the gospel narrative, and, with some, tions of life hitherto unrealized. to a modification of the popular teach- such a conception they had absolutely ing. An example of this is furnished in no precedent. To speak of it as a 'rulan essay in the Contemporary Review for ing idea' of their age is to misrepresent November by Canon Westcott. The facts. On the contrary it was to them objector to the resurrection misunder- a most difficult and strange idea. They stands the case when he represents thought at first that they saw a spirit, it as one of many raisings from the and this impression had to be overdead. The fact was essentially unique; come. the teaching which it conveyed was essentially new. The evidence it furnishes that death is the introduction to a higher state of being has so passed into modern thought, that we can hardly imagine that men were ever without this knowledge. Another truth which it teaches is only now at last dawning upon us; and we are in danger of refusing to recognize the new light which it presents. In tracing this new light the writer points out the difference between the resurrection of Christ and all other raisings from the dead. 'Briefly, it may be said that all the other raisings from the dead recorded in the Bible are instances of restoration to the conditions of earthly life; the resurrection of Christ was the revelation of a new life. The distinction is equally unquestionable and significant. There cannot be the least doubt that those whom the Lord is recorded to have called back to life were afterwards subject to the ordinary circumstances of our present existence. It is no less certain that all the notices of the Risen Lord represent Him as changed while still personally the same. The connection of the Lord with the disciples after the resurrection was wholly altered. He was known only when He pleased to reveal Himself. He was surrounded with a mysterious awfulness. At the very time when He offered a material test of the reality of His presence He showed that He was not bound by the laws of matter. There is evidently a 'law' by which the conditions of His appearances are determined.

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"There can be no doubt that the Gospels bring before us the Risen Lord as the same, and yet changed; as having entered with His perfect Manhood on a new form of existence; as having established in His glorified Humanity a new connection with mankind; as having led His disciples by His personal intercourse to grasp these novel conceptions as their abiding heritage.' Again, "The belief in the resurrection was from the first not a belief only, but a spring of energy. The disciples were not only assured that their Lord was living; they felt that He was with them, and their conduct answered to the reality of the feeling. It is not then sufficient to show how a belief in the rising of Christ might have been created among men familiar with the idea of the resurrection as we are. The problem to be solved is, how a belief was created which, from the first even till now, has made believers act as knowing that it is literally true that when two or three are gathered in Christ's Name, there He is in the midst of them. This, we may safely assert, was 'a new idea introduced into human consciousness,' and fruitful beyond all example. Later visions, so far from explaining its origin, serve only as faint reflections to witness to its power.'

THE FUTURE LIFE.-The teachers and members of orthodox Churches who are anxious to maintain in its integrity the faith of their fathers, and the dogmas recited in their chapel-deeds, must often experience very painful sensations from the outspoken utterances of some of the