A Cook's Tourist in Spain

I.

THE choice spirits of our day have found a term of contempt stronger than that of “ Philistine,” namely, “ Cook’s Tourist.” Indeed, it includes the other, for who but a Philistine would go to a land of art, historical associations, and natural beauty for a four weeks’ trip with a return ticket ? Yet I am ready to make the humiliating confession that I have done this thing, and found so much to see and enjoy, even under those galling circumstances, that a short account of my journey may amuse other Philistines, and point out a new path for their innocent pleasures.

Experienced friends who know Spain well, and have known her for over a quarter of a century, warned me against disappointment. I was not to expect customs, or costumes, or fine cities, or fine scenery, or comfort in traveling, or ease in an inn, or, above all, “ local color; ” that had vanished before the approach— the distant approach, it would seem — of civilization. Indeed, they were so anxious that I should not expect too much that they had some difficulty in specifying what. I was to expect: pictures, to be sure, such as could not be seen anywhere else, and a few fine churches, and the Alhambra, — they would not promise anything more; yet they urged me to go, by all means. Over-persuaded in this singular manner, I set out with my expectations pitched at a moderate height, and here offer my thanks to those friends for the delightful surprise they prepared for me.

At Bayonne, a pretty town with a physiognomy of its own, there are indications of Spain perceptible even from the railway : notices printed in Spanish and French, and coachmen in Figaro jackets. There we had the first glimpse of the bay of Biscay, — a mere peep between the harbor fortifications, — standing on its head in a truly traditional manner. The French frontier towns either stretch along the sandy shores or cling high up on the cliffs of these turbulent waters, which are so shut in by headlands as to resemble a series of fiords or lakes; the short, sharp spurs of the Pyrenees strike into them, a succession of abrupt hills and deep dells covered with slender pine-trees, an undergrowth of golden gorse and broom lighting up the evergreen gloom like sunshine. Every town has its church and its ruined fortress on a rising ground above the cross-timbered, many-storied, deep-eaved, galleried Basque houses. Hendaye stands on a promontory so isolated by intervening knolls that it looks like a conical island covered with a cluster of picturesque houses, no two alike, encircled by walls, climbing from the water’s edge to the castle at the summit. Another — San Sebastian, I think — is separated from the mainland by a tiny land-locked bay, joining the sea by a straight, narrow creek between two steep ridges. The smiling little town, with its white dwellings, blue balconies, and red roofs, is built in two regular lines on each side of the channel, as if it were a street; seen across the intervening water, the effect is strange and charming. The robust, well-knit peasantry, with hawk noses, wild, bright brown eyes, bronzed skin, and strong white teeth, recall the Welsh type. They have no resemblance to the people at the stations north of Bordeaux, who are unmistakably French ; the dissimilarity is a striking illustration of the difference between a nation and a race. They almost universally wear the Basque costume, a blue berret, or round woolen cap, and blue or brown homespun jacket and trowsers ; a few, principally public coachmen, sport jacket and breeches gay with embroidery, silver braid, and double rows of silver buttons, high leather gaiters, a bright sash, and a little varnished black hat with a silver band, worn jauntily over one ear. They are very proud of their nationality and language ; there is a guide-book story that they consider it the original one spoken by Adam and Eve in Paradise. Their farming implements might be made on the model of those used by our first parents after leaving the garden of Eden, and are not designed to mitigate the curse and spare the sweat of the brow of their descendants. Nevertheless, the Basque peasantry contrive to till their valleys and hillsides very well. At Irun the type and dress disappear ; the next stations show only mongrel Spanish.

My first contact with the new country was at Irun, in the custom-house, and all the boding words of the guide-book had not sufficiently forewarned me. There were but few travelers, and there were, relatively, a great many officials. The time-table announces three quarters of an hour’s delay to examine luggage, but we stopped an hour and a half; the additional respite being explained by the difference between Paris and Madrid time, which is made good out of the patience of the passengers. Three dignified personages, each with a long cloak thrown gracefully over his left shoulder and smoking a cigarita, took my modest baggage into examination, while my fellow travelers had about as many apiece to investigate theirs. The slowness, the seriousness, the silence, and the suspicion with which this investigation was carried on were entirely unprecedented in my experience, although I had made acquaintance with the custom-houses of half a dozen European countries, some of them in time of war. Articles of the most trifling value and common use excited the deepest doubts in those mistrustful breasts.

A woolen wrapper, the first thing which met their eyes, spread frankly over the contents of the lower compartment of the trunk, was taken out, weighed, measured, tested by four of the five senses, and regarded with much shaking of heads. I was asked whether it was new, whether it was for sale, and a number of other questions, which I did not understand. As the successive layers of my wardrobe were subjected to the same scrutiny, my patience gradually gave way. There is one piece of advice in which all guide-books concur, and which bad been repeated to me by everybody who knew anything of Spain, on hearing that I was bound thither : Never lose your temper. There is nothing, they said, which a Spaniard cherishes like his self-love; he cannot bear the slightest offense to his dignity, and unless you wish to have the worst of it you must treat him with the utmost forbearance, even under the utmost provocation. It is proverbially difficult for one of an English-speaking race to keep his temper with anybody who does not understand the English language; and when, in addition to this, the delinquent does not understand the use of a sponge the difficulty is aggravated. In spite of these trials, I controlled myself until the three officials, having tossed about the contents of my trunk and strewn the custom-house counter with them, dismissed me with a condescending wave of the hand, and turned away. Then my temper was too quick for me, and I informed them in the plainest English that they must put back what they had pulled out, and leave my effects in the order in which they had found them. They looked at me inquiringly and seriously. I repeated my words in a louder voice and with emphatic gestures, whereupon they gravely refolded and repacked the clothes, tucking and patting them under their covers, and locked the trunk; a porter seized it and rushed off with it to the luggage-car, the officials and I parting with a pantomime of mutual esteem. This little prefatory incident sent me into Spain in a good humor which withstood all subsequent trials of the journey, so that I cannot say whether the same plan would have answered invariably.

At Iron the scenery changes. Leaving the bold, warm-colored cliffs and blue coves, the road passes into a dreary and uninteresting region, without trees, rocks, or striking outlines; poorly cultivated hillsides rising steeper as they draw back toward the distant Pyrenees. But as night approached, so did the mountains, their grand and rugged profiles breaking through masses of golden and crimson cloud, into which the fog of the day rolled at sunset. It was a gorgeous, profuse, dazzling change, and amid the heavy purple peaks a silvery wedge of solid white gleamed through the rifts of the splendor. At twilight we were rushing between high walls of rock, rising sheer from their foundations like titanic masonry, and through gray wintry forests of great trees, twisted and torn by the winds into the semblance of monstrous hobgoblins. A depressing series of tunnels ushered us into the darkness of night. It had been as warm as June when we left Bayonne, at noon ; it was as cold as December before midnight, when we stopped at Burgos.

I had heard so much of the dirt and discomfort of Burgos that nothing but the length of the journey from Bayonne to Madrid, twenty hours, decided me to halt there, the other towns on the route dividing the distance too unequally. As I walked up the wide, easy, dingy staircase of the Gran Hotel de Paris (Antigua Fonda de Rafaela), having previously made my bargain (without doing which nobody should enter either public abode or conveyance in Spain), the unscrubbed paint of the walls and the odor of mouldy cheese, which got the better even of strong smells of tobacco and garlic, made me quail a little. I never saw a less prepossessing hostelry except in out-of-the-way towns in the old Italian States of the Church, or in one of our second-rate Southern cities, twenty years ago. My bedroom was a large, bare, square chamber, fully twenty feet high, with whitewashed walls rudely painted to imitate panels and wainscot ; the furniture consisted of a shabby, uncomfortable sofa, a chest of drawers, above which hung a distorting mirror, a small and rickety wash-stand, a huge brazier of dead ashes, and two or three new cane chairs, the single rung of which was but six inches below the seat, so as to defy even an American’s attempts to use it as a foot-rest. The floor was covered with a straw matting ; the bed stood in an alcove, with green merino curtains. Although there was a thick layer of dust over everything, the bedding proved to be perfectly clean, the wash-stand well supplied with water and towels, and there was no difficulty in having a traveling bath-tub filled. This was a fair sample of my lodgings throughout Spain, and travelers should not expect more. To conclude the chapter of creature comforts, let me say that at Burgos and everywhere else the two essentials, bed and board, were not only irreproachably clean, but in all respects tolerable. I here first made acquaintance with tortillas, or eggs scrambled with tomatoes, a very nice breakfast dish ; with omelets fried in olive oil instead of butter or lard, which had too unfamiliar a taste to be pleasant at first, but which I soon learned to prefer to those fried in grease. The bread was excellent: a little salt and not very white nor too light, — something like a home-made loaf; an agreeable change after the spongy French rolls. Then there was rice cooked in various ways, all of them good, and macaroni savory with cheese or gravy. The coffee was delicious; but cow’s milk must always be asked for, or otherwise the traveler will be given goat’s milk, which spoils tea, coffee, and every other beverage. Here, too, I bad my first cup of Spanish chocolate, thick and frothing, but overspiced ; it tasted of cinnamon rather than chocolate, as did all that I drank in Spain. Salad is always served at dinner, very nice, of fresh, crisp lettuce, and excellent oranges are never failing. This is a Grahamite bill of fare, but one need not starve upon it; and there were many strange dishes of meat, plentifully seasoned with garlic and several varieties of beans, for those who liked them. The wine was sweet and strong, with a family flavor of port, and as violet-colored as in the days of Théophile Gautier. The demeanor of the servants at the Gran Hotel de Paris teaches a wholesome lesson to those who find cause of complaint on this head in American hotels. There were two in the dining-room, a man and a maid, — the latter a most slatternly person, who dressed her hair elaborately every afternoon and stuck a flower in it, without changing her soiled apron ; next morning the apron was still more soiled, the hair was rough, and the flower was faded, but still there. The waiter was trimmer, spoke a little French, and was called El Chico on account of his stature, like Boabdil, the last of the Moorish kings. This pair used to present themselves a quarter of an hour after the bell sounded for a meal, and lean on either side of a large arched doorway communicating with the pantry, which opened into the kitchen, and amuse themselves with our impatience as the food was not served for another fifteen minutes. The boarders, who were apparently officers in garrison, lawyers, and men of business, who messed there and lodged elsewhere, would remonstrate good-humoredly at first, and then grumble. The servants, leaning against the door-posts, laughed and chaffed them, ironically congratulated them on their appetite, and inquired if they would have their food now or wait until they got it, with similar facetiœ. Once during the midday breakfast, which corresponds to luncheon in England and America, a burst of military music and the measured tramp of feet announced that soldiers were passing. The servants immediately set down the dishes they were serving, ran to a window, threw it open, and stepped upon the balcony, where they remained, talking, laughing, and looking at the regiment until it was out of sight. The meeker spirited of the guests joined them, following them back into the room when they deigned to return. Before the repast was over the drums were heard again ; out rushed the servants a second time; nobody else stirred, and a gloom fell on the company ; but it did not in the least disturb the cheerfulness of the couple on the balcony, who came back at their own pleasure, and chatted gayly with each other, as nobody else would speak to them. This was my introduction to the extraordinary democracy of manners which prevails throughout the most aristocratic and top-lofty society in the Old World.

The first morning in Burgos, on waking, I threw open the heavy wooden inner shutters and the long French window of my room, which looked on a balcony, and I drew back dazzled by the blaze of sunshine. Below, market was going on in an open square, groups of men in wide slouched hats and dark cloaks thrown over the left shoulder, and of women in black, with veils worn mantilla-wise over head and bust, stood about amongst shaggy brown donkeys, who were munching pensively, freed from their harness, and black oxen, with sheep-skin frontlets, lying on the ground near their carts, amid heaps of unfamiliar vegetables and dark red or creamcolored pottery of strange and beautiful shapes. The scene was shut in on one side by a long pale pink house front, with little iron-railed balconies at every window; on the other by a gray, castlelike Gothic building, with crockets along the edge of the roof, and a fine arched gateway surmounted by two coats-ofarms carved in the stone, bound together by a heavy sculptured cord falling in a huge tassel on either side the entrance, — the order of Teutonic knighthood (according to the guide-book). In the immediate background, with preRaphaelite disregard of middle distance, rose a steep green hill, crowned by fortifications. These simple elements composed a characteristic and purely Spanish picture.

After this view I could not dress and get out into the streets quickly enough. The general aspect of the town is modern, hut entirely foreign to everything north of the Pyrenees. The principal streets are wide, the houses high, of light-colored stone or gay stucco, with many windows, mostly inclosed in square glass bays, each with a small iron balcony. The entrance is through a deep arched doorway, generally open, on a level with the pavement, into a sort of vestibule, whence the short staircase leads up into the body of the house. But these new, fresh-looking streets are filled by a crowd of people in the very costumes, if not the very clothes, of Murillo’s and Velasquez’s times. Not a single figure was visible which might not have belonged to the seventeenth century, except soldiers, of whom there were a great many, lighting up the sombre mass with dashes of red and blue. The varieties of brown were as remarkable as its prevalence : there were snuffcolor, mahogany, chocolate, coffee, umber, burnt siena, Vandyke. The women’s dress had no peculiarity except want of conformity to any contemporary fashion. I met two or three groups of peasants, in thick woolen petticoats of old-gold color with a cherry border, black bodices, and cherry kerchiefs; some of the men wore the red Basque berret, but the predominating hues were black and brown. The streets were thronged all day long, but nobody seemed to be going any whither, or to have anything to do, except for an hour on Sunday morning, when everybody was going to or from church : that was my only glimpse of the upper classes, and they too wore the cloak or mantilla-veil, according to sex. The ladies were for the most part dressed in black, with crape veils instead of lace. Walking by twos and threes, their missal clasped in their hands and a long silver rosary dangling before them, their dark eyes cast down under their long black eyelashes, they looked like members of a religious order. I saw a few handsome faces, the outline oval, the features regular, the complexion like ivory, the hair, brows, and eyes dark as night. As a rule the faces both of men and women were too strongly marked for beauty : the features tended to coarseness, the skin to wrinkles and sallowness, the brows to grow too close and heavy. An expression of gravity, dignity, and reserve in almost every face redeemed it from commonness. The men are not tall, but well knit. The soldiers strike one as under size, on an average; the officers are fine men, but the distinction is more in their bearing than in height. A few Gothic palaces, like the Casa de Cordon on the market-place, look down on the stir and chatter of the streets; from a wide promenade, with trees and statues, bordering the river is seen the arch of a huge mediæval gateway, with heavy battlements, turrets, and towers, which frames a perpetually changing series of street-pictures. They are only a repetition of men, women, and donkeys. The latter are on curious terms with their owners : the donkey uses his discretion in obeying his driver, who has no whip or cudgel, but administers an occasional slap or push to the animal’s hind-quarters with the palm of the hand, to make him go faster. As I was watching the never-ending combinations of these groups, a circus company of fine muscular men, with bare limbs and shoulders, and gaudy tunics, mounted on showy horses with tinseled trappings, wound slowly out of a narrow street, like a procession of the Middle Ages, quite in keeping with the rest of the scene. Following them for a few steps to lend myself to the illusion, I suddenly found myself confronted by one of the great doors of the cathedral.

Of all the famous minsters I have ever seen, that of Burgos seems to me to fulfill to the utmost completeness and content the ideal of a cathedral. It lacks but two points of perfection : a better site, granting an entire and instantaneous view of the mighty structure, and an unencumbered nave, which would allow the eye to range down its whole length and embrace its grand dimensions at a glance. The first condition can never be achieved, for, besides being crowded and hidden to the knees by adjoining houses, the cathedral is built into a hillside ; so that even if the streets which abut upon it were cleared away it would not stand apart and detached, visible from all sides. One must be satisfied, therefore, to see the exterior piecemeal. The west front looks upon a small, open square, giving the spectator an opportunity of standing off far enough to get the effect of the statued gallery above the main portal, of the rich rose window, and two beautiful towers with airy spires, a network of stone through which is seen the blue sky. Two or three low steps lead up to a sort of flagged terrace, from which the church is entered at this end ; a striking feature, which I do not remember having seen elsewhere, nor do I know if it has an architectural name. On the north the Puerta del Sarmental is approached from the street by a long, narrow passage between the archbishop’s palace and the cloisters. Owing to the inequality of the ground the entrance on this side is by a very high flight of steps, leading to a magnificent doorway of the thirteenth century, guarded by a host of sculptured figures; above is seen the summit of the glorious lantern, an octagonal tower with an eightpointed diadem of exquisite Gothic carving. On the south side the level changes again ; one looks down upon the Gothic galleries of the chapels and cloisters towards the clustering finials of the eastern towers.

Entering the church from this side, one sees the pavement thirty feet below the door, which opens at the head of a magnificent double staircase, turning upon itself midway at a broad landing, — a superb production of the Spanish Renaissance. But how can dimensions or descriptions impart the sense of an immortal work of art? As the heavy leather curtain of the east door falls between the traveler and the outer world, with its besieging army of beggars, how can words convey the feelings with which he finds himself for the first time within a great Spanish cathedral, his eye straining to reach the height of the vaults and to pierce the depth of the aisles, while the sunset light of the painted windows falls athwart the pillars, carrying the gaze further and further on, until it is lost in the dimness of the distant chapels. He has the vastness to himself, for except during the morning services there is seldom any one to be seen in the long vistas ; even on Sunday at vespers there are only a few dark figures, kneeling at long distances apart, and still more isolated by the rapt intensity of their prayer. The traveler feels as if he had never been in a real church before.

The material obstacle to a full enjoyment of the sublimity of Burgos is the enormous, lofty choir, which obstructs the nave and does not even leave a free view of the upper arches. The finest general impression is to be had from the north door, whence one looks across the grand transept — only a sixth less in length than the nave — to the splendid double staircase of the south door and up into the lantern - tower, which is adorned to its very apex with graduated tiers of galleries and ogival windows, niches, statues, heads, wreaths, and all the luxuriance of florid Gothic. The richness of this lantern, although consistent with the rest of the edifice, is a singular beauty, for I cannot remember another instance of the interior of a dome or tower with any ornament except frescoes or mosaics; it is like a cavern encrusted with stalactites, and enhances the magnificence of the nave immensely.

Next to the grand harmony of the whole structure, notwithstanding the difference of age and style in its several parts, its chief characteristic is opulence of detail and wealth of special art treasures. The poor Cook’s Tourist, with but two days to give to a place where he would gladly spend two months, goes away with an unsatisfied, almost sad, recollection of marvels of sculpture, painting, wrought iron and bronze, goldsmith’s work, stained glass, illuminated missals and music-books, embroidered vestments, wood-carving, which he was obliged to slight, and of historical associations which he was forced to neglect, in those crowded hours. The screen of masonry inclosing the high altar is paneled externally with sculpture, in high relief, of the Passion, Agony, and Resurrection of Christ; there are scores of figures, about a third the size of life, executed with the finish of single statues. They are all worthy of study, but the Vigil in the Garden of Olives, by Philip of Bergoña, a Spanish sculptor of the late fifteenth century, is a masterpiece. The kneeling figure of our Saviour, the descending angel, and the apostles struggling with their sleep are represented with a grace, simplicity, and pathos which recall nothing in art so much as Perugino’s best delineation of the same subject. Single heads, of extraordinary force and individuality, prophets and apostles, project from below these panels ; on the pillars which divide them there are niches, with statuettes of royal and warrior saints, so noble in attitude and expression that the spectator cannot but wonder whether the artist found living models of such rare dignity and devoutness, or followed his own exalted conceptions alone. Behind the high altar is the Chapel of the Constable, the finest and most interesting of fourteen which surround the church. It was built by John of Cologne in 1487 for Velasco, the hereditary constable of Castile, and is a monument of Gothic art in its happiest exuberance. Amidst an efflorescence of buds and sprays like the simultaneous outburst of twig, leaf, and flower in a late spring, the constable and his wife lie side by side on tombs as rich as thrones, with the simple, stately indifference of true grandees to the magnificence around them. Their ancient lineage is attested by coats-ofarms carved in every direction among branching, blooming tracery, as if their entire ancestry had hung up their shields in this forest of stone; the sculptured orders of the Golden Fleece and of St. lago de Compostella give the last touch of pomp and pride of place to this almost royal sepulchre. When the Duke of Frias, the descendant of this noble pair and present owner of the chapel, comes to visit the hereditary constable’s effigy, he may be excused for believing that the blood in his veins is not chemically composed like that of other mortals.

Each of the thirteen remaining chapels has its picture, monument, great silver lamp with chains wrought like bracelets, or other work of art; some of them are small museums ; several are as large as a full-grown modern church, with a separate high altar, organ, and gallery. The largest, though neither the most beautiful nor the most interesting, is the great chapel of Santa Tecla, to the left of the main entrance. It is a perfect specimen of rococo decoration: the twisted columns wreathed in vines ; the vaulted roof embossed with heads of cherubim, rosettes, vases, fabulous beasts, and imaginary blossoms; the interspaces filled with clouds, flames, sun-disks; the reredos of the high altar, representing Saint Thecla on the martyr’s pile surrounded by Moors feeding the flames, might have been designed during an orgy. Yet the delicacy of coloring is exquisite : amber, rose, turquoise, aquamarine, and I do not know how many more clear, tender tints, combined by white and gilding in profusion, produce a lovely result, like a heap of rare sea-shells or a hot-house in full bloom. In spite of the detestable style of art of which it is an exaggerated specimen, it contrasts charmingly with the gray solemnity by which it is environed.

The cloisters are peculiar in being two-storied, and are exceedingly ornate. The spaces between the pointed arches are occupied by life-size statues of saints, kings, and queens ; the walls are hollowed into Gothic tombs, where below carved canopies repose knights in their armor and prelates in their robes ; through the mullioned windows turrets and pinnacles are seen against the deep blue sky; the sunshine traces Gothic patterns on the marble pavement. The lively air of heaven and a certain serene cheerfulness of their own give the cloisters a beauty and solemnity differing from those of the cathedral.

There are other fine old churches at Burgos, but they are annihilated by the neighborhood of the cathedral. Near the town are two convents which are worth seeing, even if one has but an hour to give to them. One is the Cistercian convent of Las Huelgas, about a mile northward, through the tree-bordered avenues beside the river. A great gateway in a high, blank wall gives access, not to the solitary precincts of the religious establishment, as one expects, but to a large and squalid village, and the traveler picks his way through dirt and garbage until he finds the entrance to the church for himself. There is no lack of beggars, but a peculiarity of the Spanish beggar, which distinguishes him from his brother of Italy, France, or Switzerland, is that he never offers to show you your way, or call the custodian, or perform any of those services by which the others pretend to earn your alms. The Spanish beggar is not a whit less importunate than they, but stands upon his own merits. The church of Las Huelgas has a square tower, much like that of many an old English country church, and apart from its surroundings is not unlike some early English sacred building which has escaped alteration. Tradition connects it closely with English history: it was founded by a sister of Richard Cœur de Lion, and Edward I. of England was knighted here by Alonzo X. of Castile. But royal tombs such as those that line the cloister, the sculptured arches of the doorways and vaults, are not to be found in English parish churches. Above the principal door there is a thick wreath of ivy, most beautiful and natural in execution, yet completely subordinated to decorative use; one of the pillars is entwined with convolvuluses, more conventionally treated, yet of charming delicacy and grace. The interior of the church is striking only by its good proportions, being whitewashed and otherwise disfigured, but it possesses some curious relics. Its most noteworthy feature is the nuns’ chapel, nearly as large as the main church, and occupying the usual position of the north transept. The stalls of its choir are superbly carved, and the walls hung with gorgeous old tapestries. A grating divides it from the church, and it is never profaned by the foot of man; even the preacher delivers his exhortations through the bars, the ancient pulpit turning on a swivel to bring him within sight of the nuns. Noon, the hour at which they daily assemble for worship, came while I was still lingering before the carvings of the principal door, and the sexton hurried out to adjure me by vehement gestures not to miss the opportunity. The nuns, in their long, thick white draperies, slowly entered, two by two, separating right and left, and seated themselves on each side of the choir ; there were not more than a dozen of them. One row immediately began to chant in soprano, the other responded in contralto; presently they rose, and falling in pair and rank again made their exit majestically. The ceremony did not last five minutes, and I wondered whether these brief orisons were all that the rule exacts daily. The nuns were all stout, some of them were short; their robes were long, and swayed in inconvenient folds about their feet, but such dignity of bearing and motion I never saw before. Every one of them walked as if she were a born queen. This was in part explained by Murray’s guide-book, from which I learned that to enter this particular convent a woman must be of noble birth and have a dower, that the abbess takes precedence of every lady except the queen of Spain, and that Las Huelgas is altogether a most patrician and privileged institution. By way of contrast to these cloistered dames, and to the picture seen through the grating of their white forms in the dark oaken stalls beneath the rich purple tapestry, as I walked back to town, I saw about twenty women in line hoeing a newly plowed field, — a mere flutter of dingy rags, one or two wearing tawny, yellow skirts, and all with red or rose-colored headkerchiefs; .standing between the brown earth and the blue sky, against the background of a white convent wall shaded by a gray row of leafless trees.

Two miles south of Burgos is the Carthusian convent of Miraflores. The way at first lies beside the river, along parallel avenues of trees divided by wide strips of grass, leading unexpectedly to what looks like the fragment of a palace garden, centuries old. There is a large fountain surrounded by concentric walks and high circular walls of boxwood shrubbery, encompassed by an outer ring of great trees in formal order. This strange oasis is unprotected from the public road, yet is as solitary, damp, green-mouldy a spot as can be imagined. Beyond it the road strikes upwards among the lonely hills, and by and by the convent comes in sight; its severely simple Gothic roof and tower cut clean against the sky, shut in from the uninhabited region round about by high walls inclosing a large tract of almost equal desolation. The view from this height is very striking; beautiful, too, with a stern, implacable beauty. On one hand, long lines of hillside, without dwelling, tree, or cultivation, swept by every wind and bare to the blazing sun ; on the other, sharp, serrate, deep-purple mountain ridges with glazed snow-peaks. The sky was cloudless, the sunshine splendid, the air keen and exhilarating, with a quality of lightness and purity, as if it had taken no taint from the clear, unencumbered expanse over which it blew. The church is of fine proportions, but cruelly naked under its whitewash, which contrasts crudely with the vivid stained glass of the ancient windows and the exquisite open carving of the canopied choir stalls. Before the high altar is an immense alabaster tomb, erected by command of Isabella of Castile for her parents. The royal pair repose in their robes of state on embroidered pillows; the rich stuff is so scrupulously copied that it looks like petrified brocade. Small figures, of great originality and expressiveness, kneel along the upper edge of the tomb, and its sides are crowded with scriptural subjects in high and low relief, with a herd of lions as supporters to the oft-repeated royal arms. Close by, in an arched mural recess, kneels their only son, whose death gave the crown to his sister. This monument represents a sort of oratory, but is more like an arbor of sculptured vines, with lovely children playing hide-and-seek among the leaves and grapes. It is inclosed by pillars, and surmounted by an arch and spire so elaborately and excessively ornamental that the details, beautiful and spirited as they are, detract somewhat from the still and reverent dignity of the youthful figure. The background, the base, and the moulding which joins the monument to the wall are chased like the setting of a seal. A white-robed Carthusian monk, with a good-humored, intelligent face and broad brown eyes, did the honors of his church in sympathetic silence, evidently pleased by nay admiration and astonishment at finding such works of art on this remote and abandoned hilltop. A few sentences of mine in guide-book Spanish and First Reader Latin to offer a small sum for the poor of the church porch and for the repairs of the beautiful sanctuary set him smiling and replying unintelligibly, for though I had weighed my own words, I could not keep up with his. However, he manifested so much cordiality that I imagine a visit even from a Cook’s Tourist is a welcome event in his existence.

Five miles away from the Cartuja des Miraflores, across the bare hills, is the convent of San Pedro de Cardeña, where the Cid was buried by his own wish, beside his wife and daughters and his war-horse Bavieca, the faithful steed of so many legends and ballads, that wept over his dying master, like the horses of Hector over Patroclus. The convent was founded by one of the Gothic queens of Spain, and abounds in traditions of Moorish times and in mediæval tombs. But the time was short, the way was long and lonely; there was no road for wheels, and no saddle horse or mule to be hired, so I turned back to Burgos, where the cathedral consoled my few remaining hours. I might have visited the bones of the Cid in the town hall, had I been so minded, as they were sacrilegiously removed thither some forty years ago; but I went to see neither them nor the so-called House of the Cid, deeming this to be one of the occasions on which it is safer to trust to the imagination than to ocular evidence.

At ten o’clock at night I was off for Madrid. In Spain the quick trains, that is to say the least slow, run at night only. They consume an inordinate length of time in making their distance, but the day trains are so much more tardy that they are used only by travelers whose object is not to arrive until the latest moment possible. Through the long sleepless night we were either roaring through tunnels or tarrying at places of which we could see nothing, with names which, disengaged from the Spanish lisp and gutturals, evoked recollections of the Peninsular War, of Prescott, Motley, and Lockhart, of Don Quixote and Gil Bias. The night was cold and moonless, and at Avila station the dark profile of a town on a hill, with walls and towers against the star-lit sky, promised confirmation of the reputed picturesqueness of the place. But the best stored memory and the liveliest fancy could hardly have kept the hours from dragging, until dawn revealed the most dreary and forbidding landscape which my eyes ever beheld : an irregular, broken foreground, scattered over with innumerable fragments of cold gray rock, scarred by the track of brooks which had torn their way deep into the surface, dragging stones and bowlders after them; the same scene repeated again and again, until distance effaced the details, and showed only a dun and ragged desolation, closed by mountains of a dull, lifeless blue. I do not believe that the African desert can impart such a sense of inexorable sternness and mournful hopelessness. The only relief came from an infrequent wood of small, round-headed pines, which would look gloomy in any other scenery, but which gave this a sort of doleful cheer. I saw so much of this stony sterility in Spain that I could not wonder at the poverty of the people, or the impossibility of wringing a subsistence from such a soil. There were hours of it before the Escurial appeared, squatting like a monstrous gray toad in the midst of the morose solitude. It is an immense construction by actual measurement, but as wanting in every element of greatness as the soul that conceived it. It is a huge muniment house for the secret history of Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I heard in Madrid that a learned friar, after long researches there, had lately published a work to rehabilitate the memory of Philip II., who is not venerated even in Spain. If he has found new matter in the archives of the Escurial, he can reckon upon readers, if not on converts. As we drew toward Madrid the gray stones grew fewer, the lines became less harsh, the grim aspect of the country relaxed a little, and the woodland of royal domains clothed the hillsides in several directions. The railway stations are a long way from the principal plaza, the Puerta del Sol, on which stand the best hotels, and, on first arriving, one gets an idea of the town which is not much modified afterwards. It is a mere modern capital, not unlike Munich, but still more like Washington : wide, dusty avenues planted with trees which give no shade; immense public buildings of more pretension than merit; irregular lines of houses, the largest and handsomest side by side with the smallest and shabbiest; great gaps of vacant ground covered with rubbish; tasteless monuments, extortionate-looking shops, pretty little public gardens and squares ; the most miserable of street carriages, horses, and drivers; no life in the extremities, but always an idle, miscellaneous crowd at the centre, the Puerta del Sol. No European town can be so destitute of physiognomy as an American one, and Madrid has some peculiar fea-

tures and a certain grand air of its own, but flattened and indistinct like the die on the old Spanish “levies” and “fips ” which were in circulation with us a quarter of a century ago. The cloak is universally worn by men of all ranks, with great variety as to lining, the favorite colors being the national ones, deep yellow and bright red ; the garment is thrown over the shoulder in such a manner as to show a stripe of each. The dandies, polios as they are called, wear velvet collars of dark blue, green, brown, or black, to match the cloak, for all these shades are in favor in Madrid ; sometimes lined with light-colored silk or satin, pale blue being much approved. This excessive elegance is kept for the evening and dress clothes. Great study “is bestowed on giving the clonks graceful folds as they fall over the left shoulder, leaving the right hand free beneath to offer to a friend or to hold a eigarita. The mantilla is often seen, but much less frequently than at Burgos, and chiefly among the middle and lower classes. Some of the officers have a beautiful uniform, light blue with white facings heavily braided with silver, and there are few street scenes in which they do not appear. Another figure of the plazas of Madrid is the crone, in a dark dress and bright headkerchief, selling water, which she carries in a large ivory-white jar of Oriental form ; glasses and long sticks of coarse white sugar, called ozucarillos, are ranged in the sockets of a curious brass stand surmounted by round brass balls about the size of oranges, the whole apparatus glittering with cleanliness. The wet-nurses of rich people wear a gorgeous costume : a skirt of red, purple, or any brilliant color, striped above the hem with black and gold, or some other strong contrast, and a fringed neckerchief, usually black or white. Their little nurslings are most often in white, but sometimes cluster round their knees in rose-color or blue, like a bunch of buds. The boys who have got beyond petticoat government march about solemnly, clad in dark velvets and broad Vandyke collars, in charge of a blackrobed priest. Most Spanish children are handsome and sturdy, with rich, ruddy complexions, and a physical vigor which is seen in their dense black hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes, and in their full crimson lips.

The Puerta del Sol is a paved polygon, so irregular in shape that it is difficult to judge of its extent, which, however, appears great, particularly in crossing it on a sunny day or a muddy one. There is room, and much to spare, for cabstands, omnibus stations, a tramway terminus, and a fountain ; it is the headquarters of the hotels, cafés, shops, and all that portion of a town designed for deluding strangers. It is never quiet, day or night; the noisy newsboys shout the evening papers until they begin to sell the morning ones. The great rival hotels are the Paris and the Paix. and for foul smells, steep stairs, poor fare, and high charges they divide the palm. Yet in these, as in the Fonda de Rafaela at Burgos, the beds and table are clean, and there is a perpetual scrubbing of some part of the house. The habits and customs are bewildering to a foreigner. In the lower hall of the Hotel de Paris there was a big man in gray, called the concierge, but who exercised some of the functions of clerk and hall-porter. He sat all day at the foot of the staircase playing cards at a round table with three or four comrades of evil mien, not concealing his annoyance when called off by lodgers to attend to his business. On each landing there are a bench and table, at which the female servants congregate and tlirt with men who seem to come in from the street for that purpose, as they are not inmates of the hotel in any capacity, and always keep their hats on. My observation of this practice goes as far as the fourth story. The washerwoman, fetching or taking away the lodger’s clothes, avails herself of these social opportunities for hours at a time. There are electric bells in the bedrooms, but the servants bawl to each other all over the house from story to story, and from end to end of the dining-room while waiting on table; the Spanish boarders generally calling out their orders, too. Adjoining the dining-room is a small apartment called the reading-room, in which there are native and foreign newspapers, writing materials, and some show-cases of sham antiques, with addresses of bricabrac shops and other cards of advertisement. The Spaniards collect in this room as they leave the table after the midday breakfast, and immediately begin to smoke, which they continue to do until midnight, their example being followed by foreigners of every nation (including English), our countrymen alone excepted, although there is no other public sitting-room for ladies.

To return to the streets : asses and mules abound in them; there is abundance of horses, too, and of all conditions of men on horseback, riding about their business. I could not understand the politico-economical position of the donkey in Spain ; he seems to be an object of luxury as often as a possession of poverty, it is common to use a donkey, often an absurdly small one, as leader to a line of large horses dragging a load of stone or iron, a custom for which nobody could account. The modes of harnessing are odd and various; the trappings of the beasts, especially the mules, are sometimes gay and fanciful. There are public vehicles, a cross between omnibus and stage-coach, of which I saw none but shabby, rattle-trap specimens, used by the common people, drawn by two, three, or four horses; the driver sitting on the shaft, the box-seat being occupied by passengers. Four-in-hands are more common in Madrid than in London or Paris, but it is by no means a matter of course that the equipage should be elegant. Even the king and queen observe no great state in their comings and goings. Every Saturday afternoon they go to pray for a short time in an old convent church called the Atocha, on the outskirts of the town ; rather picturesque, with its open garden court in front, and arcades half hidden by creepers. It is a usage dating from the time of Philip II., and attracts attention on that account only, for it makes but a poor show. The king’s coach, preceded by an outrider in uniform, is a simple close carriage with four horses, a coachman and two footmen in plain dark livery, three-cornered hats, and powdered wigs ; it is accompanied by a mounted escort of about twenty soldiers ; the gentlemen and ladies in waiting follow in three similar carriages, and a single mounted guard brings up the rear. They dash through the streets at a good pace, but there is nothing impressive in the procession beyond its associations and the fact of seeing four-in-hands used as mere conveyances, with no special end of ceremony or frolic, like opening Parliament or driving to the Derby. The royal stables are on the list of sights for strangers. They are in an immense brick and granite building, lofty, well lighted and ventilated, clean and in good order, with an entire absence of “ fancy ” arrangements. There are several hundred horses: one compartment is given up to the royal saddlehorses, another to the saddle-horses of the suite, a third to the four-in-hand and other carriage-horses for the king and queen, a fourth to the carriage-horses for the use of the palace ; and there are others. The horses are beautifully groomed ; most of them struck us as in too high condition, but seeing them only in the stalls it was impossible to judge of them fairly in any way. There are a number of English horses, and several Irish hunters with prodigious haunches ; among these is the queen’s favorite saddle-horse, a huge beast, over

sixteen hands high. Here I saw for the first time the true Spanish horse, the Andalusian barb, the steed of Velasquez’s equestrian portraits ; he is seldom over fifteen hands, with a big head, neck, and body, tremendously long thick mane and tail, a prominent eye of great intelligence and gentleness, and none of the signs of the English blooded stock. At first the looks of a saddle-horse so unlike the English, American, and French standard shock the prejudices of a horseman of one of those nations; but every rider must soon he convinced of the delightful qualities of the barb, his strength, endurance, docility, steady temper, smoothness of gait, and lightness of mouth. Not being bred or trained to jump, he is unfit for fox-hunting or steeple-chasing, but for a riding journey he is perfection ; his action is extraordinarily springy, almost plunging to appearance, but it is as easy as a rocking-chair. The only specimen of the arched neck and fine limbs, dish-face and small ears, which we prize in horseflesh was a small light bay mare, with large eyes of the same color and the expression of a setter-dog. Not only did she turn such looks of affection on her groom that his face melted into smiles every time he glanced toward her, but when strangers stroked and patted her she laid her head against their breasts and looked up into their faces with canine gratitude and tenderness. There was not one of the party who did not linger in her stall, and leave it with regret. There is a pretty collection of poniss for the queen and princesses to drive in pairs and fours. One of them was a little black, woolly fellow, crinkled like a negro’s pate, with mane and tail to match; he had an ugly head, and was altogether abnormal and unattractive. There was another mite of a creature, a beautiful miniature thoroughbred, though with the strange tapir-like upper lip rather common in Andalusia; he was so used to petting that he ran after us and stood on his hind-legs begging for sugar, and it was with difficulty that we kept his tiny fore-feet off our shoulders. The exhibition of saddles and harness is handsome, but too large to be seen thoroughly in one visit, and is not interesting enough for two. The showcases are arranged down the middle and around the walls of a gallery as long as Wimpole Street,¹ and present a gorgeous assortment of housings, caparisons, harness, and hammer-cloths. There are saddles and bridles of pale blue satin and silver for royal weddings, others of chamois-leather embroidered in gold for royal huntings, and superb sets of black harness with black velvet and satin hammer-cloths for royal mourning; there were trappings fit for the Field of the Cloth of Gold, used by the young grandees at their amateur bull-fights on very great occasions, such as the accession of a sovereign ; but a Catalogue soon grows tedious. There are some handsome modern state carriages and some of the last century, painted as prettily as a lady’s fan ; but the coach-house, with its immense variety of brand-new vehicles, is like the show-room of an American carriage-factory. The only one possessing any historical interest is that shown as the carriage in which poor mad Joan, Juana la Loca, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella and mother of the Emperor Charles V. traveled about with the dead body of her husband, the handsome Philip of Austria. The carriage is appropriately painted and lined with black, and has a suitably funereal aspect the guide explains that it has been “ restored.” It is, however, merely a Louis XIV. berline, richly carved with Cupids and garlands, much out of keeping with its pretended purpose and date. It is evidently fictitious, yet awakes some emotion by recalling the memory of that hapless woman. She has lately acquired new interest from the discovery of documents proving that, if not inclined to the heretical ideas of the reformers, she was at least opposed to religious persecution and unfavorable to the Inquisition, and that a temporary insanity was made the pretext for the long captivity and harsh usage to which she was subjected by her unnatural son and hard-hearted grandson because her orthodoxy was suspected. These documents, which have come to light within a few years, give Juana la Loca a new claim to compassion. She has long been a favorite subject with Spanish artists ; I know of four life-size pictures on her story by contemporary artists.

Pictures ! The word has a portentous significance in Madrid. Nowhere else does life seem so short and art so long as at the door of the great gallery of the royal museum. If I were to say that I had found more Italian masters there than in the Pitti palace, more French ones than in the Louvre, more Flemings than at Antwerp, and more Spanish pictures than in all the rest of Europe, it would convey my first impression of this stupendous collection. The master-portraits of Titian are there, some of the finest Tintorettos and loveliest Veroneses, two world-famous Raphaels, several canvases of Andrea del Sarto unsurpassed by any in Florence. With regard to native art, it may truly be said that nobody can have a just idea of Spanish painting without having been in Spain. There are fine, specimens of the principal masters in several of the public galleries of Europe, but to understand the variety and concrete force of any one of them he must be studied in the Spanish museums and churches. There are some who are unrepresented and unknown out of their own country : two in particular, Joanes Vincente, commonly called Juan de Juanes, and Luis de Morales, both of the sixteenth century, who are overshadowed by the greater names of the succeeding age.

Both show the influence of early Italian and Flemish schools, but they have a concentration and poignancy in the expression of suffering which is national and individual. They painted religious subjects exclusively, and in their mode of depicting the Ecce Homo, Mater Dolorosa, Agony in the Garden, and Descent from the Cross, there is a singular bitterness of anguish, the moral and physical sentiment of the gall and wormwood, the vinegar mingled with honey. This quality they have in common, but in other respects they differ widely. There are but half a dozen pictures by Morales, only one of them on a more cheerful subject, the Presentation at the Temple, in which the youthful Virgin advances toward the aged Simeon at the head of a lovely, lightly moving band of girls, imbued with innocence and simplicity. Juanes has nearly twenty pictures in the Madrid gallery, of which five constitute a series on the history of St. Stephen. As well as I can remember, their size is three feet by two, and they are crowded with figures excellently drawn and spirited even to exaggeration ; when this tendency is controlled, the expression of the faces is wonderful; the coloring is bright and clear, but they are deficient in atmosphere. On the same wall hangs a life-size three-quarters-length portrait of Don Luis de Castelvi, a Valencian nobleman of Charles V.’s time, a man in the prime and pride of life, in a dark, rich, bejeweled dress; it is a splendid picture, worthy of Titian or Moor, and might have been painted a century later than the series of St. Stephen. There is also a small picture, by the same master, of the Coronation of the Virgin, a 16mo canvas so to speak, composed in the conventional manner with rows of doctors, confessors, martyrs, saints, and angels, and executed with the patient care of Hamling or Van Eyck. The versatility of which these two last-named pictures give proof is extraordinary, considering

the clearness of conception and firmness of execution which are also to be found in all Juanes’ works ; he did not waver and falter between different styles, but went straight from one to another, with a fixed purpose and a steady brush. Tradition says that be was noted for devoutness, and his life was almost that of an anchorite; the sacred images always hung in his studio, and he never omitted to pray before beginning to paint. Fervor of devotion, intensity of supplication, are the strongest characteristics of Spanish religious pictures: in these they are unapproached by any other school. Murillo’s saints are so absorbed in prayer, their look of entreaty is so compelling, that the celestial apparition descending toward them seems but the natural, the necessary, answer to the appeal: the limits of sense, of space and time, are forgotten; they are insensible to the cold, heat, thirst, and fatigue which waste them; they are consumed by a desire for a nearer communion with Christ, and it must needs be vouchsafed to every one who so beseeches. There is nothing of the placid rapture and beatitude of Italian pictures on the same subjects; the look with which the saints in Spanish art receive their divine visitors is one of infinite assuagement and consolation rather than of actual bliss ; the remembrance of pain is never absent. Even in the St. Anthony of Padua of the Seville gallery the predominant expression is that of relief from prolonged strain and suffering. They are profoundly affecting pictures. Spanish religious art goes far to explain Spanish religious persecution. The native painters all seem to have possessed this capacity for conviction ; it is signally illustrated by Velasquez’s famous Crucifixion, his one religious picture. Among the fifty and odd canvases by him in the gallery of Madrid there are one or two on sacred subjects, but they might as well be secular. In the Crucifixion our Saviour is represented as just dead : the face and form are of great beauty, attenuated by an austere life and recent torture ; the head has sunk on the breast, and one heavy lock of dark hair falls across the right side of the face and almost hides it; the clay-like hue of the flesh, a few drops and streaks of dark blood, are the only tokens of physical suffering; the face has in its expression all the words uttered from the cross, which is erect in appalling solitude against the blackness of darkness. The picture is out of place in a gallery ; it is fit only for a church, to be unveiled in Passion Week. It is, as I have said, strictly speaking Velasquez’s only religious picture, and it strikes one as though the painter had been exhorted to pronounce his creed, had summed up his whole belief in this Crucifixion, and had left It to the world as his profession of faith.

Velasquez’s pictures, besides being splendid works of art, reflect the court life of his country and century like the palace mirror in his canvas of Las Meninas. They depict the famous personages of his day, the royal pleasuregrounds, with old-fasliioned fish-ponds and formal avenues, processions of state coaches and troops of stiffly-robed lords and ladies who have got out of them to take the air; they chronicle the existence of the royal children, encompassed with artificial restraints of brocade and etiquette; they reveal the courteous, chivalrous side of the national character in the magnificent surrender of Breda, where the Duke of Spinola accepts the keys of the captured city as if they were a gift; they betray its barbarous side in a strange assemblage of dwarfs and jesters. The dwarfs are a collection of every type of humanity afflicted with that particular deformity. There is one called El Prime, whose poor little body supports the head of a philosopher, with phrenological indications of high moral and intellectual qualities, and a sad, selfcontained, thoughtful, handsome, middle-aged face; he is turning over the leaves of an ancient tome, in which it is easy to believe that he may find consolation. Next to him hangs a diminished and distorted copy of the human form in the mockery of a rich dress, crimson embroidered with gold, surmounted by a big head with irregular features lighted by a pair of dark eyes like live coals, and an expression of acute mental suffering and hopeless revolt against fate. The face burns with passionate grief and hatred, but there is nothing base in it; on the contrary, there is a capacity for love and devotion. I heard a number of people, on first coming up to it, echo my own silent exclamation, “ Triboulet! ” Beyond this is a less painful picture of the conventional dwarf, tolerably well proportioned, with a round face, long curly hair, and the choleric expression of a child who is alternately petted and teased. The little fellow, splendidly dressed like a court page, stands stoutly on a pair of good legs, holding his whiteplumed hat; beside him there is a fine mastiff, as tall as himself. Next is a poor half-witted creature, sickly and misshapen, with a cunning but harmless face, blurred features, and a dim glance ; if he was not tormented he was probably not unhappy. The last of the series is merely a small monster ; the heart swells and sickens at the thought of his being made the butt of jokes and tricks. The jesters are a very different race, and look quite able to take care of themselves; their common trait is an irritable eye and the air of paid assassins. There is one of them painted in a very simple scarlet dress, holding a naked sword in his hand, with a fine face and figure, but so grim of aspect that I took him at first for the king’s bravo or the state executioner. There is a deplorable absence of landscape-painters among the Spanish artists. Velasquez has left half a dozen sketches of villa gardens and parks, but there is nothing else of the sort, so that one turns for relief to the fine landscapes of the Low Country masters in the side-rooms. This is a curious deficiency in the native art.

I have no intention of going through the list of the pictures, or even the painters, in the Madrid gallery, but I cannot turn away from it without mentioning Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, Sanchez Coello, and Alonzo Cano : the first two are among the fine portrait-painters of the sixteenth-century ; the last is a seventeenth-century painter of sacred subjects, noted also for being almost the only sculptor of merit whom Spain has produced in later times. Between the old and new schools of Spanish painting stands Goya, who died about fitty years ago in extreme old age. To my thinking, he is the most original genius of modern times. There are few of his pictures out of Spain: one or two in the Louvre, one or two in Belgium, and Americans might have seen two volumes of his Capriehios in the Spanish government building of the Centennial Exhibition. Everybody who turned over those pages will remember the frenzy of fancy, reveling in the grotesque and horrible. Spanish galleries are full of Goya’s pictures, and the streets of the subjects from which he took them. His compositions have a grace, dash, and “ go,” a freedom of first impulse and an audacity, inconceivable to those who do not know him. The criticism of Goya in Théophile Gautier’s eloquent and picturesque travels in Spain gives as good a notion of his genius as words ever can do of works of art.

To Gautier also may be referred those readers who wish to know a bull-fight by hearsay ; they can satisfy their curiosity by reading his chapter on the subject, which leaves nothing for any other traveler to add. The crowd returning from the sport along the Alcala, a long, wide street leading from the Puerta del Sol to the Bull Ring on the outskirts of town, is one of the most extraordinary sights which Europe affords in the present century. A disorderly battalion of omnibuses, barouches, light wagons, coupés, four-in-hand breaks and drags, cabs, mule-carts, and numberless nameless vehicles, some drawn by a single horse or donkey, some by two, three, four, or six, with jingling bells and dangling fringes and tassels, filled with fine ladies and gentlemen dressed in Paris fashion, with women of the town in black lace mantillas, bunches of carnations in their hair and fans in their hands, with middle-class dandies in round cloaks, with peasants in Andalusian jackets and red berrets, with people of the lower orders in any sort of rag, rush by helterskelter, pellmell, like a routed army, smoking, singing, laughing, shouting, — interspersed with hundreds of horsemen and thousands of people on foot dodging the carriages. The arrogance of everybody’s demeanor passes belief, from the blue-blooded grandee with a title as old as the kingdom to the beggar with his tattered cloak draped over his shoulder and his battered hat cocked over his loft ear and slouched over his right eye. Such an aggressive assertion of independence and equality is unknown even in France, and can be seen in our own happy country only on St. Patrick’s day. Everybody is as good as everybody else, and better, except when a barouche tears by with the hull-fighters in their sumptuous costumes of embroidered satin and velvet; then the whole multitude does homage with huzzas and waving hats. The rabble gallops on across the Prado and up the steep streets on the city side, filling the Puerta del Sol for a noisy half hour, then pouring off down a dozen diverging streets, when the Puerta del Sol returns to its normal condition of a vast human ant-hill of idle ants. Yet if this mad multitude at the height of its frenzy meets a priest and his acolyte carrying the Host to a sick-bed, the tumult is instantly stilled, the on-rush checked in full career, and every knee is bent and every head uncovered, while the tinkling of the little bell can be heard. These weekly saturnalia strengthen the impression of the semi-civilized condition of Spain which a stranger receives from numerous and divers trifles. Neither the country nor the society has kept pace with the age. Even the gossip from high-life, which reaches him remotely, has not the ring of chit-chat of the present day; the scandals of modern Spanish society are so gloomy and romantic, with the highsounding names of the actors in them, that they are fit for plots of the tragedies of two hundred years ago. The discrepancies in the mode of life of people of rank and wealth are among the symptoms of this semi-civilization. The royal palace, a fine building with a long front and wings agreeably divided by pilasters, stands upon a bluff above the thirsty little river Manzanares, a broad, terraced drive leading down to the base, where an extensive orangery shows a thick screen of dark foliage and bright fruit through great glazed doors and windows. At the foot of the declivity lies the Caza del More, or Chace of the Moor, a small uninclosed park of fine trees, formal shrubbery, and walks converging toward a central fountain. Between this pleasure-ground and the river, directly under the eyes and nose of royalty, a belt of wretched houses occupied by washerwomen stretches along the bank ; it is an untidy laundry, a mile long, and the king and queen cannot leave the palace in this direction without crossing a tract of fluttering house and body linen which comes between the wind and their nobility. It is the only way of reaching the Caza del Campo, a royal park for pheasants and ground game which lies just beyond the city limits, on the farther side of the Manzanares. The Caza del Campo is not a gay resort; indeed, it is hardly a resort at all. I rode there two or three times, the regular promenades, the Buen Retiro and Castillanas, being too crowded and circumscribed for exercise; and I met hardly anybody except a few groups of ladies in black walking near the entrance followed by their carriages. Etiquette — a word which is not obsolete in Spain — prohibits the fashionable drives to people in mourning, so they come to this deserted chace to stretch their limbs. There is no pretense of keeping the place up; there are some short drives in good condition, bordered by fine trees, but they soon merge into rough roads, leading among low hills and abrupt hollows, spotted with a gnarled, dusky, evergreen oak, and as lonely as the surrounding country. The ground is covered with short, close grass and aromatic herbs, over which the smooth-paced Spanish horses canter lightly, keeping a sharp lookout for rabbit-holes, as the whole domain is little better than a warren. The small, brown masters of the soil start up at every moment, wrinkling their noses at intruders from the height of their hind-paws, and only on instant peril of being ridden down disappear into their subterranean abodes with a twinkle of a white-lined tail. From the hilltops there is a view on one hand of the wide, desolate, barren plain, sloping up gradually to an expanse of pale green table-land, level as the sea, and melting into the horizon ; on the other, low hills tread on each other’s heels, until they are stopped by the long crenelated wall of the Guadarrama range, violet and lilac and silvered with snow. Southward Madrid stands up on its bluff, showing the long, many - windowed fronts of its public buildings ; and at this distance its flat roofs and light tints give it a more foreign appearance than it wears in its streets and plazas, with a faint suggestion of the East. Here, on these breezy hills, one escapes from the immediate climate of the city, which has the peculiarity of Boston, so trying to tire nerves, of stringing them to cracking-points, while it induces a constant sense of fatigue; at Madrid, too, humanity is under the “whip of the sky.” The water, on the contrary, which does not come from the panting Manzanares, but from springs among the Guadarramas, is deliciously soft: under

its influence the skin becomes like velvet and the hair like floss-silk ; after a bath the body is as smooth as if it had been anointed.