BURGOS TO VALLADOLID.

From Burgos to Valladolid, one of the old capitals of Spain, is a journey of seventy or eighty miles. The city is full of historical interest, though there is not much now remaining to detain the tourist. The French committed even more than their usual amount of devastation during their occupation of the place, and several disastrous inundations have combined to destroy most of the traces of former magnificence. The house in which Columbus died is marked out by an inscription on the wall-it is now a small shop for the sale of woollen goods. Visitors are likewise shown the houses of Cervantes, Calderon, Berruguete, and Alonzo Cano. Cervantes superintended the publication of Don Quixote whilst living here. The University is famous throughout Spain as a school of law and medicine. It numbers at present about one thousand students. The Museum contains a few fine pictures, which however are almost lost amidst the accumulation of worthless rubbish. The cathedral is a fine massive building, of the Corinthian order, excellent in design, but unfinished, bare and dilapidated. The palace has seldom been the abode of royalty since the removal of the capital to Madrid. Bonaparte however occupied it for some weeks in the early part of the year 1809, during his invasion of the Peninsula. He at the same time gutted and stripped the great palace of the Inquisition, and turned it into a cavalry barrack. The building still stands, though in ruins-an impressive memorial of the past.

The Plaza Mayor is memorable as the site of the first auto da fé of the Protestants in Spain. Here the gloomy tyrant Philip 11. looked down from a balcony upon the dying agonies of men "of whom the world was not worthy," and gloated over their sufferings. Valladolid was, like Seville, one of the great centres of Protestant activity in the days of the Reformation. And here the fires of the Inquisition raged most fiercely for its suppression. In a subsequent chapter the events connected with the terrible history will be narrated at greater length.

The road onwards from Valladolid passes through some of the wildest and most untamed tracts of country in Spain, perhaps in Europe. For many leagues the road winds along amidst huge masses of granite, and over vast undulating plains, thickly strewn with blocks of unhewn stone. Few habitations of any kind are passed, and those are mere wigwams distant from the road, and making its solitude seem the more solitary.

From this wild waste of grey granite blocks there rises a grey granite city— Avila, one of the most perfect relics of medieval architecture in the world. It is surrounded by granite walls forty feet high and twelve feet thick, with eighty-six towers and gateways all complete and unbroken. The walls give the impression of being imperishable as the granite of which they are formed. Tradition says that it was built by and named after Albula, the mother of Hercules, about two thousand years before Christ-and the legend seems almost credible when heard on the spot. It is certain that the walls as they now stand are eight

centuries old.

The road still continues across a wild desolate waste, bounded on either hand by savage mountains. In the course of a few leagues forty-four tunnels are passed through. Gorges and ravines and river-beds are spanned by innumerable bridges, which attest the courage of the engineer who designed, and of the English and French shareholders who paid for them. At length the Escorial is passed, and in about an hour we reach Madrid-Imperial y coronada, muy noble y muy leal y muy heroica, as its monarchs have styled it: "The imperial and crowned city, most noble, most loyal, and most heroic."

MADRID, THE ESCORIAL,

AND

SEGOVIA.

MADRID, THE ESCORIAL, AND

SEGOVIA.

MADRID-SITUATION

CLIMATE

NOT

ALTOGETHER

WANTING

IN

PICTURESQUENESSSTREET CRIES-THE PRADO CHURCH OF THE ATOCHA-THE QUEMADERO-BULLFIGHTS-PICTURE GALLERY-WORK OF EVANGELISATION-THE ESCORIAL-SEGOVIA.

THE

HE first view of Madrid, from which-
ever side the visitor approaches it, is
very fine.
To those coming up from
the south, from Toledo and Cordova,
there are few cities in Europe which
offer a more imposing coup d'œil.
It
stands upon an elevated plateau, the
These, upon
meagre; but

edge of which is lined with noble edifices.
closer inspection, look bare, formal, and
seen at a distance they have a very striking effect.
The Prado and the gardens of Buen Retiro afford a
mass of foliage and verdure which is very refreshing to
the eye wearied with a monotonous succession of brown
hill-sides. The atmosphere over the city is clear and
full of light, free alike from smoke and haze. The colours
are everywhere bright and cheerful. And the grand
snow-capped heights of the Guadarrama range form a
framework and background of which any city might be
proud.

As to Madrid itself opinions differ very widely. The general verdict of foreigners is unfavourable. Recent works on Spain describe it as "stiff and formal," "a poor little imitation of Paris," "a city of shams and veneer." Even Ford, who finds something to admire in most things Spanish, speaks of it as "disagreeable and unhealthy;" "placed in a most faulty position, which has no single advantage except the geographical merit of being in the centre of Spain." In