Excerpt from Castilian Days Yond those picturesque mountains the Spanish monarchy enjoys a new lease of life by favor of circumstances which demand a chronicler of more leisure than myself. I must leave what I wrote in the midst of the stirring scenes of the inter regnum between the secular monarchy and the short-lived Republic whose advent I foresaw, but whose sudden fall was veiled from my san guine vision - without defense or apology, claim ing only that it was written in good faith, from a heart filled with passionate convictions and an ardent love and devotion to what is best in Spain. I recorded what I saw, and my eyes were bet ter then than now. I trust I have not too often spoken amiss of a people whose art, whose liter ature, whose language, and whose character com polled my highest admiration, and with whom I enjoyed friendships which are among the dearest. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.