WE had the advantage of an American gentleman's society in the railway carriage when we started for Madrid; also that of a rather pedantic Englishman—both types of their respective nations. It was most interesting to observe how, by asking both the same question, the peculiarity of their separate nationalities was brought into curious contrast.

"Do you prefer the opera house at Valladolid to Her Majesty's?" asked we, in the course of conversation, of the Englishman.

"Sir," replied he, "upon the occasion of an examination at a public school, I was once requested to name the greater prophets, and then to name the less. I immediately refused, and observed to my examiner that I never made invidious distinctions. I now make you the same answer."

We then put the question to the American, who said,—

"Waal, stranger, I guess I prefer neither, for the manner in which you conduct operatics in Europe is a caution to snakes, and aside of being ridiculian in manner, I put it down slick as base and tyrannical, which howsomever is only as how yew poor European critturs is suckled to enjure, except Irish cutes, who, I calculate, are absquatulating from the rotten old world, and making pretty quick tracks across the fish-pond to the Almighty States, and that's a faact."

At this juncture it seemed necessary to lead our friend back to the subject of the opera, else he would have probably dilated upon very inconvenient subjects, until, as he himself had occasion to observe, "Eternity's bell rang."

It came out, however, that the English method of conducting operatic matters was worthy only of an effete and senseless old aristocracy. In England we were assured by our independent compagnon de voyage that a prima donna who happened to have a bad sore throat was still compelled to sing as well as if her voice was in the best condition. Was there ever such cruelty? Notwithstanding the danger to that delicate and costly organ of song, the human throat, she was forced to come forward and execute the most elaborate and difficult airs, with variations, to amuse a public the most exacting and the least sympathetic in the world; whereas in America, if the lady's throat was at all in a delicate condition, she was at once excused by her enlightened audience, who never expected that impossibilities were to be accomplished for their gratification. In fact, according to this gentleman's account, America must be so free and enlightened a country, that it is a wonder that such old-fashioned notions as obligation, contract, &c., &c., should exist therein, or that prima donnas should ever sing at all during an opera, unless perfectly convenient to themselves. In fine, if our friend's judgment was to be trusted, the national motto of Columbia should be the accommodating one of that much respected establishment, suppressed a century ago, the Hell-Fire Club—to wit:—"Fay ce que voudras." [5]

The commencement of the journey, after leaving Valladolid en route for Madrid, lay through vast tracts of sandy plains, with the far horizon bounded by brazen hills like those of Africa, and long, lofty table-lands, beneath which the Nile might well be streaming. But this is indeed, at this season at all events, a dry and barren land, where no water is. However, many broad acres of this now arid country were a few months ago smiling with waving corn. Still desolation must in a great measure be the general characteristic of the scene, with Oriental-looking mountains of bare sand, on which nothing can grow but stones, and where life is rarely seen in any form save that of the wild goat, the vulture, and the outlaw. There is little doubt that, at one of those far distant epochs with which geological science makes us familiar, the two continents joined at the spot where are now the Straits of Gibraltar, and that Spain was then continuous with Africa. In point of fact, the soil of Spain, as far as Burgos, has precisely the same characteristics as that of Africa.

So on we glide, over plains and tracts of glaring sand, enlivened only here and there by a solitary peasant driving a flock of black sheep over the white expanse to places where a few miserable patches of some rank vegetation offer a meagre grazing ground for the poor animals. At long intervals there appears, seated on the plain like some low, flat island, a wretched poverty-stricken town, the burning rays of the sun reflected from its broken house-tops and off its yellow walls. In the far distance the eye may perhaps distinguish another, and after we have passed it, yet another, rising far away, isolated on the dreary waste. A large church seems to domineer over the hovels beneath, its toppling spire leaning as it were with neglect and exhaustion. Scarce a soul appears amidst these mural wildernesses. There is none of that stir, animation, and cheerfulness which generally accompany city, town, or village life in other countries. The burning sun, the sandy desert, the monotonous wilderness, have evidently left their impress on the character of the people. As we proceed rapidly over the plain, a pile of tower and battlement in ruins—a relic of heroic story, and of the glories of other days—appears before us, standing midst the solitude like the skeleton of some long-forgotten animal which had fallen there when the world was yet young, and over which now the wild birds scream and whirl, while the long, rank weeds which nearly cover it sigh to the passing breeze.

This bright October weather is like the finest July days in England, tempered by a fresh, gentle, and wholesome breeze. We stop at little stations in the midst of the wilderness; in fact, it seems that we stop pretty nearly as often as it suits the guards or engine-drivers, for the stoppages are not confined to stations or villages, but sometimes take place in the middle of fields, where there is no sign of habitation. Some woman, perhaps, may rise from the border of a ditch, where she has been resting, with a child in her arms, and all the officials will get down and have a chat with her, while the good-natured passengers, who take the stoppage as a matter of course, get out and smoke cigarettes.

When some lone station, which is represented by one small house, is reached, the carriage windows are immediately surrounded by tottering old men in ancient velvet hats with very broad brims, and with little silk balls dangling therefrom. They are all swathed in a wonderful collection of rags, pinned, sewed, nailed, and tied on to their bodies anyhow, while their legs are bound up in pieces of sacking, and their feet apparently encased in poultices. Where they come from none can tell, nor can man's ears divine their speech—some patois which even native Spaniards can hardly understand.

Amongst the specimens of drapery composing the toilet of one poor old man, whose face was simply black from dirt and sun, who seemed actually rotting alive, and who appeared to think there was nothing in his condition to regret, there were two triangular patches of green damask, with roses worked thereon, fastened somehow on to his back, together with a remnant of a sail-cloth shirt. One sleeve of the latter was of yellow cotton, while the other arm was concealed from view by a short mat of horse-hair and a piece of carpet sewn together. A sash of faded scarlet encircled his waist, and his lower extremities were enclosed in inexpressibles made of goat-skin with the hair outside. He had a long stick in his hand, and was accompanied by a lynx-like dog, who devoured greedily grape-skins as they fell from a carriage window. This poor old man had no teeth, only one eye, and was very much bent. He and the other ancients were such masses of dirt that they must have been designed by Providence as places of refuge for destitute insects.

These beggars are generally seen in small companies, and it is not advisable to approach them too nearly, as there is a deal of esprit de corps amongst them. Whence the poor wretches come, and where they live, no one can tell, for there is not even one of those decaying old towns, with the big church before mentioned, near their usual haunts. They seem to exist simply—because they don't die—from mere force of habit. There are beggars, of course, in all countries; but such degraded, miserable beings as we meet in beautiful Italy and brilliant Spain, are to be seen in no other part of the world.

After this purposeless stoppage, our express train moves on again at a good six miles per hour, and there is no further halt till we reach the ancient city of Avila, founded by Hercules, and the birth-place of St. Theresa. Its decaying old streets, its high mouldering castle, its Gothic houses, and its large churches, have all a very forsaken aspect. It is surrounded by great military walls, lofty, massive, and grey, [6] through which the listless-looking natives have egress from the city into the wilderness around by means of gateways of enormous thickness. There is something sad and impressive in seeing this ancient city, in which there are so many remains of power and grandeur, now given up to the inexorable hand of time and the cold blight of desolation. What a sermon might be preached from such a text on the mutability of all earthly grandeur!

As if to make the solemnity of the scene more complete, while we were sauntering during our hour's halt through the dark old streets of Avila, a funeral procession came by, preceded by a troupe of ghoul-like creatures, bearing their stiff and soul-less burden, hooded in black from crown to sole, with scarce a semblance of humanity in them, save the unholy-looking eyes, which, amidst the deep drapery, glanced furtively at us from out the cavernous eyeholes in the masks which they wore. The mournful procession consisted, as usual, of shaven priests, attendants bearing flambeaux, and children singing the Miserere; in a word, there was all the empty pageantry with which the Catholic Church deposits the dead in their last earthly home. The coffin was painted a bright crimson colour, and a key was fastened near the lock by a chain, to be in readiness at the Day of Judgment.

When we had taken our places in the train again, the steam was put on, and we moved off, gradually increasing our speed till it reached the unprecedented velocity of nine miles an hour. This greatly alarmed a lady in the carriage, who, no doubt, was of that Spanish Conservative party which prefers things as they are. People in America, even the ladies, take matters much more quietly. An ancient dame was travelling by rail for the first time in her life, and when the "smash up," which is almost a matter of course among our go-a-head friends, came, and fatigue-parties arrived to carry her off with the other wounded on a stretcher, she was quite astonished when told that it was an accident, as she had thought the whole thing a regular pre-arranged part of the business of every-day railway travelling, and took it all quite comfortably. In fact, she was rather interested than otherwise in her initiation into one of those stirring incidents which it is the fortune of travellers to encounter more frequently in America than elsewhere.

Meanwhile we glide on through dreary regions, the far distance bounded by barren mountains. We pass over vast treeless plains strewn in all directions, as far as the horizon, with huge broken masses and boulders of granite. A scene more expressive of gloom and desolation cannot be imagined. The huge fragments, scattered about as far as the eye can reach, are piled up occasionally into enormous heaps, which look like the remains of ruined cities of an unknown age; or spread widely over the grey expanse, like the tombs of the races which once inhabited these regions. It is impossible, indeed, to conceive anything more austere than the effect produced by a scene at once so grand and so desolate.

The railroad now began to ascend by gradual inclines, making wide casts over the stony tracts. The amount of engineering skill, money, patience, and gunpowder it must have taken to cut through, in some places, miles of solid granite, must have been great. We were now commencing the ascent of the Guadarrama Mountains, which overlook from afar the capital of Spain. This fine ferrocarril, the construction of which is somewhat similar to that of the railroad over the SÖmmering Pass near Trieste, surmounts altitudes by curves and gradual inclines.

The Guadarrama Mountains, with other sierras, of which the principal are the Somo Sierra, the Sierra Morena, the Alpuxarras, the Sierra Nevada, and the Sierra de Ronda, are remarkable features in the aspect of Spain. Surrounding the plains of Castile and La Mancha, the highest of such extent in Europe, with strong natural bulwarks, they are invaluable to the Spaniard in the defence of his native land. They even seem to constitute distinct moral divisions of the inhabitants. The whole country thus appears to be formed of several intrenched camps, and is admirably adapted for a war of posts—particularly for guerilla warfare, by their skill in which the Spanish mountaineers were enabled to offer such a successful resistance to their French invaders.

Higher and higher wound the road, until we suddenly burst into a region of pine forests, which darkened the sides of the mountains. The profound gorges, the aspect of which was so savage, were rapidly filling with purple mist as the sunset left them, to fall in various tints of farewell glory upon the loftier ranges of distant mountains, which seemed to melt away, wave on wave, against the clear, far heavens. The middle ground was filled with a broad expanse of warm, rose-lit plains, from the bosom of which, at unequal distances, towered enormous rocks, clothed to their summits with pine-trees. What a prospect it was! Such a scene of mingled gloom and glory the pencil of Salvator alone could render—the funereal plumage of the deep forests waving on the mountain's side, and the long rays of the sinking sun shooting through the darkness like celestial arrows, while high above a few feathery cloudlets sailed tranquil through the liquid ether, like troops of supernal messengers.

The shades of evening were falling upon the earth, when a vast, grey edifice of gloomy majesty loomed ghostly in the twilight, resting under the shadows of a darkening mountain, and all alone amidst a region of wild and desolate grandeur. This was the Escorial, the grand convent-palace of Philip II., and the burial-house of the Spanish kings. Such an edifice, almost the vastest in the world, in such a spot, and seen for the first time at such an hour, impressed one with a feeling of wonder and awe. We had little more than a glimpse of this historical building as we glided past. Our carriage moved on, now filled with dark women with brown babies, and soldiers with white kepis and red trousers; while, of course, a dash of garlic was not wanting, with the odour of five cigarettes going simultaneously, to render unbearable the atmosphere in the carriage, all the windows of which were hermetically closed, in order to exclude the terrible fresh air.

At last, however, to our joy, Madrid was reached. Nothing could exceed the extreme polish and urbanity of the aduaneros, of whose severity we had heard so much. Instead of ransacking the luggage, and making hay of one's shirts, a very handsome dark young man in uniform, having satisfied himself of the truth of our statement, that we were not professional smugglers, offered us a cigarette, gave us a light from his own, took off his hat, observed that he immensely admired the British Constitution, and then ordered us a brougham. The existence of such a class of officials at a terminus is really not an unmixed good. Imagine what might have occurred had we been susceptible daughters of Albion on their travels with an invalid or sleepy mamma! We tremble for the peace of mind of future English young ladies, travellers to Madrid.

Madrid, looked upon merely as the capital town of Spain, is extremely disappointing, [7] and simply a bad imitation of Paris, with little or nothing in it of original Spanish customs or life. The street architecture is modern, garish; it has a gingerbread appearance, and the use of whitewash has been too liberal. Although in the centre of Spain there are no remains of the Moorish or mediÆval periods, nothing to represent the better class of art; and if you would find a bit of downright, dirty, picturesque Spanish street, you must penetrate to the back settlements, or the St. Giles's of Madrid—in fact, to the Calle de Toledo. There, beneath a blue sky, with squatting brown women suckling naked brown babies in the sun, gaudy churches, squalid houses, priests and beggars, not to speak of fish, vegetables, offal, and dogs, you may, after removing your handkerchief for one moment from your nose, imagine yourself amongst the slums of Naples.

With the exception of some few women of the middle and lower classes, who pin black silk aprons on to the backs of modern chignons, and on Sunday, or at the bull-fight, perhaps a bit of old lace, none are seen wearing the graceful mantilla, or those dark robes with ample skirts that sweep the streets. The traveller has rarely an opportunity of observing in the capital that delicate and piquant flirting with the fan which we always associate with our ideas of Spanish ladies; but he may occasionally remark very bright and meaning glances directed to the opposite sex by eyes of dazzling lustre. To see the romance of old Spain, however, one must go down south to warm Seville and historic Granada, where, by the way, we do not intend to go, as everybody has been there before; and it has now become a matter of legitimate pride to be able to say: "Behold before you a man who has not been to the Alhambra!"

The men in Madrid, although sometimes wrapped from heel to nose in the orthodox conspirator cloak, make themselves very eccentric in appearance by crowning their heads with that latest invention of the Evil One, the modern French chimney-hat; and that, too, in a very exaggerated form. The utter incongruity of these two articles of manly dress must be seen and felt to be thoroughly appreciated. To a tourist, indeed, who travels at a vast outlay of time and expense—to say nothing of cheerfully delivering up his body as a pasture-ground for innumerable fleas—in order to see Spain and the Spaniards as they ought to be, it really enters like iron into the soul (although, for the life of us, we could never understand that anatomical operation), to see Spain and Spaniards, in the matter of costume, at all events, as they are, and as they ought not to be.

However, here we are, for better or for worse, safely landed at the best hotel in Madrid, on the Puerta del Sol, and we are bound to say we did not find it as a married man, on the authority of a well-known anecdote, is said to have found his wife,—all worse and no better. The Hotel de los Principes will take a deal of beating from any hotel in Europe in point of comfort, cleanliness, and civility. Situated on the sunny side of the Puerta del Sol one has the pleasure of looking on an ever-changing and busy scene below, as he smokes the morning cigarillo in the balcony. On this spot, in former days, according to a popular legend, there stood a church upon whose door the sun, for some mystic reason, remained long after it had left all other doors. The gateway or door of this church was consequently called La Puerta del Sol, from which the present plaza derives its name.

This open space is the life and heart of Madrid, all the principal arteries of the city proceeding from it. Here, all business is done, and pleasure taken; speculations are entered into, and politics discussed (as much as is consistent with personal security); and, consequently, it is the first place to which foreigners resort. It is the exchange, the betting-ring, and the general lounge. The garrison, with flags and band, march through it once a day; and to those who were so minded, here was the best chance, at the time of our visit, of looking upon the countenance of Queen Isabel II., as she passed in her chariot and four-in-hand of mules.