It is not too much to say that the conduct of every individual in Cervera’s fleet at Santiago de Cuba showed that the Spaniard’s magnificent courage, his absolute devotion to duty, and his disregard of death are no whit less to-day than when those two thousand naked men stood in the breach to be slain in the name of their country’s honour.  The Oquendo, already a wreck, coming quietly out of her safe moorings in obedience to the insane orders of the Government in Madrid, steering her way with absolute coolness so as to clear the sunken Diamante, to face certain and hideous death, is a picture which can never fade from memory.  It was said at the time by their enemies that there was not a man in the Spanish fleet that did not deserve the Victoria Cross; and this was all the more true because there was not even a forlorn hope:  it was obedience to orders in the absolute certainty of death, and, what was harder still, with full knowledge of the utter uselessness of the sacrifice.

It is difficult to imagine that anyone can read the record of this heroic passage in the history of the Spain of to-day without a throb of admiration and pity.  No wonder that the generous enemy went out of their way to do honour to the melancholy remnant of heroes as they mounted the sides of the American ironclads, prisoners of war.

Cervantes gave to the world a new adjective when he wrote his romance of The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha—­a world in which the filibusters are those of commerce, the pirates those of trade.  When we English call an action “quixotic,” we do not exactly mean disapproval, but neither, certainly, do we intend admiration; unless it be that of other-worldliness which it is well to affect, however far we may be from practising it ourselves.  It is, at best, something quite unnecessary, if acknowledged to be admirable in the abstract.  The quixotic are rarely successful, and success is the measure by which everything is judged to-day.  Be that as it may, the more intimately one knows Spain, the more one becomes aware that what is with us an amiable quality of somewhat dubious value, is one of those which go to make up the Spaniard in every rank of life.  His chivalry, his fine sense of honour, are nothing if not quixotic, as we understand the word; and just as in Scotland alone does one appreciate the characters in Sir Walter Scott’s novels, so in Spain does one feel that, with due allowance for a spirit of kindly caricature, Don Quijote de la Mancha is not only possible, but it is a type of character as living to-day as it was when the genius of Cervantes distilled and preserved for all time that most quaint, lovable, inconsequent, and chivalrous combination of qualities which constitute a Spanish gentleman.  Among her writers, her thinkers, her workers—­nay, even now and then among her politicians—­we come upon traits which remind us vividly of the ingenious gentleman and perfect knight of romance.