Generals Concha and Diego de Leon. The latter was shot in Madrid. Espartero crushed with much energy a revolutionary rising in Barcelona, but on his return to Madrid was so coldly welcomed that he perceived that his prestige was on the wane. The advanced Progressists coalesced with the partisans of the ex-regent Christina to promote pronunciamientos in Barcelona and many cities. The rebels declared Queen Isabel of age, and, led by General Narvaez, marched upon Madrid. Espartero, deeming resistance useless, embarked at Cadiz on the 30th of July 1843 for England, and lived quietly apart from politics until 1848, when a royal decree restored to him all his honours and his seat in the senate. He retired to his house in Logroño, which he left six years later, in 1854, when called upon by the queen to take the lead of the powerful Liberal and Progressist movement which prevailed for two years. The old marshal vainly endeavoured to keep his own Progressists within bounds in the Cortes of 1854–1856, and in the great towns, but their excessive demands for reforms and liberties played into the hands of a clerical and reactionary court and of the equally retrograde governing classes. The growing ambition of General O’Donnell constantly clashed with the views of Espartero, until the latter, in sheer disgust, resigned his premiership and left for Logroño, after warning the queen that a conflict was imminent between O’Donnell and the Cortes, backed by the Progressist militia. O’Donnell’s pronunciamiento in 1856 put an end to the Cortes, and the militia was disarmed, after a sharp struggle in the streets of the capital. After 1856 Espartero resolutely declined to identify himself with active politics, though at every stage in the onward march of Spain towards more liberal and democratic institutions he was asked to take a leading part. He refused to allow his name to be brought forward as a candidate when the Cortes of 1868, after the Revolution, sought for a ruler. Espartero, strangely enough, adopted a laconic phrase when successive governments on their advent to power invariably addressed themselves to the venerable champion of liberal ideas. To all—to the Revolution of 1868, the Constituent Cortes of 1869, King Amadeus, the Federal Republic of 1873, the nameless government of Marshal Serrano in 1874, the Bourbon restoration in 1875—he simply said: “Cumplase la voluntad nacional” (“Let the national will be accomplished”). King Amadeus made him prince of Vergara. The Restoration raised a statue to him near the gate of the Retiro Park in Madrid. Spaniards of all shades, except Carlists and Ultramontanes, paid homage to his memory when he passed away at his Logroño residence on the 8th of January 1879. His tastes were singularly modest, his manners rather reserved, but always kind and considerate for humble folk. He was a typical Spanish soldier-politician, though he had more of the better traits of the soldier born and bred than of the arts of the statesman. His military instincts did not always make it easy for him to accommodate himself to courtiers and professional politicians. (A. E. H.)
ESPARTO, or Spanish Grass, Stipa tenacissima, a grass
resembling the ornamental feather-grass of gardens. It is
indigenous to the south of Spain and the north of Africa (where
it is known as Halfa or Alfa), and is especially abundant in the
sterile and rugged parts of Murcia and Valencia, and in Algeria,
flourishing best in sandy, ferruginous soils, in dry, sunny situations
on the sea coast. Pliny (N.H. xix. 2) described what
appears to have been the same plant under the name of spartum,
whence the designation campus spartarius for the region surrounding
New Carthage. It attains a height of 3 or 4 ft. The
stems are cylindrical, and clothed with short hair, and grow in
clusters of from 2 to 10 ft. in circumference; when young they
serve as food for cattle, but after a few years’ growth acquire
great toughness of texture. The leaves vary from 6 in. to 3 ft. in
length, and are grey-green in colour; on account of their tenacity
of fibre and flexibility they have for centuries been employed
for the making of ropes, sandals, baskets, mats and other articles.
Ships’ cables of esparto, being light, have the quality of floating
on water, and have long been in use in the Spanish navy.
Esparto leaves contain 56% by weight of fibre, or about 10% more than straw, and hence have come into requisition as a substitute for linen rags in the manufacture of paper. For this purpose they were first utilized by the French, and in 1857 were introduced into Great Britain. When required for paper-making the leaves should be gathered before they are quite matured; if, however, they are obtained too young, they furnish a paper having an objectionable semi-transparent appearance. The leaves are gathered by hand, and from 2 to 3 cwt. may be collected in a day by a single labourer. They are generally obtained during the dry summer months, as at other times their adherence to the stems is so firm as often to cause the uprooting of the plants in the attempt to remove them. Esparto may be raised from seed, but cannot be harvested for twelve or fifteen years after sowing.
Another grass, Lygeum Spartum, with stiff rush-like leaves, growing in rocky soil on the high plains of countries bordering on the Mediterranean, especially of Spain and Algeria, is also a source of esparto.
For the processes of the paper manufacturer esparto is used in the dry state, and without cutting; roots and flowers and stray weeds are first removed, and the material is then boiled with caustic soda, washed, and bleached with chlorine solution. Sundry experiments have been made to adapt esparto for use in the coarser textile fabrics. Messrs A. Edger and B. Proctor in 1877 directed attention to the composition of the slag resulting from the burning of esparto, which they found to be strikingly similar to that of average medical bottle glass, the latter yielding on analysis 66·3% of silica and 25·1% of alkalies and alkaline earths, and the slag 64·6 and 27·45% of the same respectively.
ESPERANCE, a small seaport on a fine natural harbour on the
south coast of West Australia, 275 m. north-east from Albany.
It is a summer resort, and in the neighbourhood are interesting
caves. Its importance as a seaport is due to its being on the high
road between the eastern states and the gold-fields, and the
nearest place for the shipment of gold from the Coolgardie fields.
ESPERANTO, an artificial international auxiliary language
(see Universal Languages), first published in 1887, seven years
after the appearance of its predecessor Volapük (q.v.), which it
has now completely supplanted. Its author was a Russian
physician, Dr L. Zamenhof, born in 1859 at Bielostok, where the
spectacle of the feuds of the four races—each speaking different
languages—which inhabit it (Russians, Poles, Germans and Jews)
at an early date suggested to him the idea of remedying the evil
by the introduction of a neutral language, standing apart from
the existing national languages. His first idea was to resuscitate
some dead language. Then he tried to construct a new language
on an a priori basis. At the same time he made what he appears
to have considered the great discovery that the bulk of the
vocabulary of a language consists not of independent roots, but
of compounds and derivatives formed from a comparatively
small number of roots.
At first he tried to construct his roots a priori by arbitrary combinations of letters. Then he fell back on the plan of taking his roots ready-made from existing languages, as the inventor of Volapük had done before him. But instead of taking them mainly from one language, he has selected them from the chief European languages, but not impartially. Like all inventors of artificial languages, he is more ready to experiment with foreign languages than with his own; and hence the Slavonic roots in Esperanto are much less numerous than those taken from the other European languages. Here his choice has been to some extent guided by considerations of internationality, although he has not fully grasped the importance of the principle of maximum internationality, so well worked out in the latest rival of Esperanto—Idiom Neutral (see Universal Languages). Thus he adopts a large number of international words—generally unaltered except in spelling—such as teatr, tabak, even when it would be easy to form equivalent terms from the roots already existing in the language. Where there is no one international word, he selects practically at random, keeping, however, a certain balance between the Romance words, taken chiefly from Latin (tamen) and French (trotuar), on the one hand, and the Germanic on the other hand, the latter being taken sometimes
