The Spanish story of the Armada Author:James Anthony Froude Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SAINT TEEESA.1 Seprinted from the ' Quarterly Bevievj.' ON the western slope of the Guadarrama mountains, midway between Medina del Campo and the Escu- ria... more »l, stands the ancient town of Avila. From the windows of the railway carriage can be seen the massive walls and flanking towers, raised in the eleventh century in the first heat of the Spanish crusade. The fortifications themselves tell the story of their origin. The garrison of Avila were soldiers of Christ, and the cathedral was built into the bastions, in the front line of defence, as an emblem of the genius of the age. Time has scarcely touched the solid masomy. Ruy Diaz and his contemporaries have vanished into legend; but these silent monuments of the old Castilian character survive to remind us what manner of men the builders of them were. Revolutions on revolutions overflow the Spanishpeninsula, condemn the peasantry to poverty, and tlie soil to barrenness; but they have not in these later times unearthed in the process a single man like those 'whose names are part of European history. They have produced military adventurers, and orators like Castelar, of ' transcendent eloquence' ; but no Cid, no Grand Captain, no Alva, not even a Cortez or a Pizarro. The Progresista of our age has a long ascent before him if he is to rise to the old level. 1 I. Ada S. Teresice a Jesu, Cannelitarum strictioris Obser- vantwe Parentis. Illustrate a Josepho Vandermoere, Societatis Jesu Presbytero Theologo. Brn- xellis, 1845. 2. Obras de Santa Teresa de Jesus. Barcelona, 1844. The situation of Avila is extremely picturesque, standing in the midst of grey granite sierras, covered with pine forests, and intersected with clear mountain rivulets. It is now thinly populated, and, like most towns in Spain, has fallen into decay and...« less