OCR Text |
Show R Spain's Glory and Shame. It was very splendid, that marriage in Madrid; " the gilded coaches, the white horses, the flags, the marvelous vestments, the gems, the music royalty and nobility on dress parade and a proud and ostentatious nation showing the world how it could receive an English princess and do her honor. If memories were stirred they were of past glories which grew more and more Impressive the farther back they were traced; for that is tho land which was foremost in Europe only a dozen generations baclc, a land of heroes, scholars, schol-ars, orators, poets; it is the land whose queen had the inspiration to make possible the pushing back from the face of the Atlantic the veil and revealing a new world in the west; it is the lan a where knighthood was born'; it is the land whose people were great enough long ago to drive from their sod Rome's Imperial legions, a land where valor and romance and chivalry held their seats for centuries rthe ideal land of all the earth for generations. And this royal marriage seemed for the hour to stop and roll back the wheels of tho ages, and to call ip Hps for the occasion all the splendor, all the pomp, all the graces of the days when among tho nations she stood first, without a rival. . 1 It was altogether gorgeous, nothing like It has I been seen in modern times and the young king and queen will,, all their lives, hold the memory of It as something more magnificent than anything any-thing Europe has seen since Hhe days of ' chivalry. chiv-alry. Still as one reflects upon it, a sadness comes to the heart for really the masses of that fair 1lnd are distressingly poor, and hundreds who shouted their vivas as the glittering procession flashed past, had had no breakfast. Not only are the masses poor, but the percentage per-centage of the llllterAte among jthem is appallingv. Worse still, tber sufferings have beeirso great that tho manhood of the men, the womanhood of tho women have-been tainted past. rjegeneratlbn. There Is no fair devision of the nation's .wealth among the peopK A few are very "rich; the great host is made up of men and women who are poor past description and children growing up in ignorance so profound that tho heart is touched at the spectacle. May the marriage be an omen of good. May the young king and queen be inspired with a desire de-sire 'to restore some of Spain's lost, grandeur by kindling hope in the hearts of her poor. In these latter days thrones rest on precarious foundations. The only safety for tho strongest one is in doing justice to the people; justice which goes to improving thoir material condition and in lighting the lamp of knowledge in their souls. The cry of the world for this grows louder and louder. May its echoes reach Spain; may they enter the imperial palace and awaken an ambition in the souls of this young king and queen, to make for themselves greater than wan Philip's of Isabella's, and to exalt themselves by bending and lifting up their humble subjects. No king ever engaged in higher work.. May it in future fu-ture be told that the re-creation of Spain had Its-dawn Its-dawn in the reign of Alfonso and Ena. ' |