This is an unpleasant town; the necessaries of life are extravagantly dear; and the comforts are not to be procured. I hear from one who must be well acquainted with the people, that "there is neither friendship, affection, or virtue among them!" A woman of rank, during the absence of her husband, has been living at the hotel with another man! and yet she is received into every company. I ought to add she is not a Spaniard, but in England adultery meets the infamy it deserves.

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The king set off to the frontiers of Portugal on Monday last; his retinue on this journey consists of seven thousand persons; and so vain is his most Catholic majesty of this rade, that he has actually had a list of his attendants printed on a paper larger than any map or chart you ever saw, and given to all the grandees in favour. We were in hopes of securing a carriage through the marquis Yrandas's interest. The intelligence he gives us is very unfavourable to men who are in haste. The court will not be less than fifteen days on the road with us; no interest can secure us a carriage; and if we can get one to set out, it will probably be taken from us on the way by some of their retinue; and there is no accommodation at the posadas, for, independant of the common attendants, six hundred people of rank were obliged to lie in the open air the first night; nor can we go a different road without doubling the distance; for were we to attempt to enter Portugal by Ciudad Rodrigo, and the province of Tras os Montes, if the rains which are daily expected should overtake us, the mountain torrents would be impassable.

'Mambrino's account of the cat-eating is confirmed: I was playing with one last night, and the lady told me she was obliged to confine her in the house lest the neighbours should steal and eat her.

While we were at the palace, the king sent home a cart load of horns to ornament it. A singular ornament, when the shameless conduct of his wife is the topic of general cen sure. Malespini, the circumnavigator (whose honourable boast is that he has done no evil on his voyage) has been imprisoned about six weeks on suspicion of being concerned in a French book exposing the private life of the queen. What

must that woman be who is detested for her depravity in a metropolis where the Cortejo system is so universal? About two years ago the washerwomen of Madrid were possessed with a spirit of sedition, and they insulted her majesty in the streets." You are wasting your money upon your finery and your gallants--while we are in want of bread!"

"When it is said that this metropolis is in the centre of the peninsula, all its advantages are enumerated: except when swollen, by the mountain snows the Manzanares is so shallow that if a cockle should attempt to navigate it, he must inevitably run aground. In summer the heat is intolerable, in winter the cold is very severe; for the soil round the city produces nitre in great abundance, and the Guadarama mountains are covered with snow; so that you have the agreeable alternative of being starved for want of a fire, or suffocated by the fumes of charcoal. The floors here are all covered with matting, and the matting is prodigiously populous in fleas.

Monday 11th.] Last night I was at a Fiesta de Novillos, a bullock fight, at which about fifteen thousand persons were assembled, many of them women, and indeed more women of apparent rank than I had seen either at the theatre or the opera. In this very rational recreation, the bullocks are only teazed, and as their horns are tipped the men only get bruised. A bullock was led into the area, and the heroes amused themselves by provoking him, then running away and leaping over the boundary. But the two principal heroes were each of them in a basket which came up to his shoulders, this he could lift up from the ground, and move along in it towards the bull, then he sticks a dart in the bull, and pops down in the basket which the beasts knock down, to the infinite delight of fifteen thousand spectators! Once he tossed the man in the basket, and once put his horns in at one end and drove him out at the other. When one bull was done with, some tame cattle were driven in, and he followed them out. Four were thus sucessively teazed, but a more barbarous sport followed. A wild boar was turned in to be baited. Most of the dogs were afraid to attack so formidable an enemy, and the few who had courage or folly enough were dreadfully mangled by his tusks. His

boarship remained unhurt, and after maiming every dog who attacked him, was suffered to go to his den. The remainder of the entertainment consisted in turning in bullocks one at a time among the mob. They provoked the beast, and the beast bruised them; and I was glad to see that the advantage lay on the side of the most respectable brute.

All the children here have their hair tied. The children are men in their dress, and the men children in their understanding. The waistcoats are generally laced before instead of being fastened with buttons. In many parts of the country the sleeves of the coat lace on, and there are two openings left, one at the elbow and one at the bend of the arm within. We have frequently seen undressed skins used as sandals. In Leon the soles of the shoes are wood, and the upper leathers made of hemp.

'To-morrow morning we leave Madrid; the court has now preceded us ten days; they have eat every thing before them, and we ought to wait for a new generation of fowls and turkies. A journey in Spain is never an agreeable undertaking to look on to; but however we begin to know the value of bad beds and bad provisions, when we are in danger of getting none. His majesty travels fast: three of his guards have been killed, and four seriously hurt, by galloping before his coach. They suffered less during the war.

'I must not forget to give you a curious proof of Spanish ingenuity. There is a fire-place in one of the apartments of the English ambassador: he had ordered the chimney to be swept, and coming into the room found three masons, with pick-axes, &c. preparing to make a hole in the wall!

Wednesday, Jan. 13.] At eight o'clock yesterday morning we made our escape from Madrid, and repassed the bridge of Segovia. We travel in a calessa with two mules; a carriage of the same kind, though more elegant in name and less so in appearance than an English buggey. Our larder consists of a large undressed loin of pork, two hams, and a quieso de puerco, or pork cheese, which is tolerable brawn. As we follow the royal family so close, we were in expectation of excellent roads, but tho' the roads were smoothed for them, the multitudes of VOL. IV.----(73)

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their retinue have made them infinitely worse than they were before. Two leagues and a half from Madrid is Mostoles. Here we took a cold dinner, and I visited the church, which Duten speaks of as remarkably elegant. It well repaid my visit; but the most remarkable things there were four mirrors, each with a figure of some heathen deity ground on it. I thought Diana and Mercury odd personages to be pictured in a Catholic chapel.

The house at Valmojado is very miserable; they had neither a cloth to wipe our hands, or a blanket to cover us. The woman appeared at least seventy. She told us she was but eight and forty, but added that she had much trouble in her time, "mucho trabajo!"

"We passed through Santa Olalla, and made our halt for the night at the village of Bravo, after a journey of eight leagues. We are now going to sit down to pork chops and fried onions, a pretty cool supper! but supper is our grand meal. A cup of chocolate by lamp-light is but a comfortless breakfast, and in the middle of the day we make our halt as short as possible, in order to get in early in the evening. The want of vegetables is a serious evil. Our food is very heating, and this with the fatigue of travelling occasions a feverish thirst at night.

'We are obliged to superintend the cooking ourselves, or these people would scorch the meat to a cinder. Some person asked Mambrino at Madrid, how he lived upon the road? He replied, "Very well, but the cavaliers eat their meat almost raw."

'I was curious enough to measure at what height from the ground they had hung their looking glasses here: it was nine feet, and as all that I have yet seen are hung equally high, we may acquit the Spanish women of vanity. In a church porch here is a large picture of St. Christopher, carrying Christ over the water, and a bishop is waiting to receive him on the bank. This legend reminds me of what I heard of the present king of Spain at Madrid: whenever he hears the Devil mentioned, he is so terrified that he crosses himself and says his prayers.

There are no candles in this country. A piece of cane cut with holes through it, is suspended from the roof, and from one of these holes the lamp is hung by a hook. no bolster since we left England, and alas! we adieu to the land of blankets!

We have seen

have now bade

The pepper of all this country is red. Apollyon could not find a better kind of nutmeg for a cool tankard of aquafortis.

'Saturday.] We are now following the court closely, and never did I witness a more melancholy scene of devastation ! His most Catholic majesty travels like the king of the gypsies; his retinue strip the country, without paying for any thing, sleep in the woods, and burn down the trees. We found many of them yet burning: the hollow of a fine old cork-tree served as a fire-place. The neighbouring trees were destroyed for fuel, and were a brisk wind even now to spring up, the forest might be in flames. Mules, and horses, and asses lie dead along the road, and though they do not cry aloud in our ears against the barbarity of thus destroying them by excessive fatigue, yet they address themselves strongly to another sense. The king is very fond of inscriptions. Not a ditch along the road has been bridged without an inscription beginning, "Reinando Carlos IV." I feel very much inclined to indulge in a placard upon one of the mutilated old trees.

Leaving the forest we entered upon a swampy plain, where, as Dutens says, the road became truly detestable. It is a stage of three hours and a half to Almaraz, a singular little town, where the houses seem built for pigmies and the church for Patagonians. Less than a league distant runs the Tagus, crossed by a noble bridge of two arches. On the bridge are the remains of a house; all we can read of the inscription told us it was made by the city of Plasencia, under Charles V.

This is a very large house with very vile accommodations. The covered space thro' which we enter, where the calessa stands, and where the carriers sleep among their baggage, is seventy feet by twenty-five. My bedstead is supported by sticks from which the bark has never been stripped. The beds are bad, and the court have dirtied all the linen. Here