SUNDAY IN SPAIN.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 833, 4 July 1871, Page 3

SUNDAY IN SPAIN.

(From the " Scotsman.") Malaga, February 28, 1871. The streets of Malaga ou the afternoon of Sunday the 19ih instant, afforded a curious contrast to thoße of a Scotch town on Sunday in February. It is carnival time* and on the Alameda a military band is playing lively airs to an audience of thousands. Hundredß of gaily and fancifully dressed men are women are walking up aud down. What they are saying to one another my ear is too unpractised in the language to make me sure, but 1 shrewdly guess that chaff and flirtation are its essence. Id the humbler quarters of the town, $8 contrast in question is, in somerespects at least, if not in all, not less striking. I take the Calle de Capuchinos as an example, having passed down it on the afternoon of the 20th. The Calle is about sis yards broad. Soto© attempt at paving it you would guess to have been made, but not very successfully, perhapß half a tentury ago. In the middle of the gutter lies the body of a dead cat. Strewed up aud down are heaps of ashes, eggshells, broken bottles, old shoes, orange-peel, fowls' heads, and other debtis. A cloudless sun, hot as aJScotch ©ne m the dog-days, is blazing overhead; no Wonder, therefore, that the odours are pestilential. This is, however, the unpleasant side of the picture—Unpleasant enough, it must be confessed. But, if dirty, the Calle is also picturesque. At the doors of the fruit shops, of which there are many, are piles of oranges and lemons, acid and sweet, stacks of sugar-cane, tuficbes of flowers, —violets, geraniums, heliotropes, and many other beautiful and fragrant varieties, in ■strange contrast to the place of ex. Viteon. While old folks are basking iazily and silently in the sun, youths and Jark-eyed xnaidens, some in fancy ttaes, others in plain but gay holiday attire, are walking up and down or standing in groups, chaffing and chattering, love-making and laughing—laughing many of them till the tears mn down their cheeks; the merriment being plainly so genuine and hearty that it does one good to see and hear it, even though the cause, as one may guess, be of a somewhat humble order of humour. While such a way of spending the Sunday is, ot course, in the highest •degree improper, we may fairly consider, in condemning it, that there are attenuating circumstances in the we. We may consider that, yrhile in our own melancholy and dyspeptic climate a strict and decorous observance of the Fourth Commandment, as expounded by our own learned divines, is easy—indeed, in some respects almost natural—excopt to children, the same becomes very difficult to men and women who have the animal Spirits of children, and for whom Nature is for ever radiant with sunshine and warmth—flowers and verdure. Indeed, I have grave doubts if even our most powerful preachers would be able to get this ignorant people to see that there is one day in the week on which Heaven has forbidden them to enjoy its gifts, Again, I would urge that there is at least one injunction in the commandment in question which is even better observed here than in Scotland. The Spaniard is safe to "do no manner of work" either on Sunday or any other day, that he can possibly avoid doing, i Finally, it may be pleaded that his | fashion of Sunday observance does not necessitate his having recourse ; to alcohol either during the day or at the end of it. I have now been ten Weeks in Spain, and I have not seen a drunken man. It is with the profoundest deference that I venture to submit this fact to our clergy; and I would even he so bold as to suggest that, without adopting the Continental fashion of keeping Sunday, they might -of course, after at least one sermon -allow the poor mechanic just a little amusement on his only holiday. And M there is to be little, let it be quite rational—a game at golf for instance, I w something similar.