own then contained about twelve thousand
inhabitants. Under the forcing atmosphere of a court, the population
rose by the end of his long reign to three hundred thousand,[483]--a
number which it has probably not since exceeded. The accommodations in
the capital kept pace with the increase of population. Everything was
built for duration. Instead of flimsy houses that might serve for a
temporary residence, the streets were lined with strong and substantial
edifices. Under the royal patronage public works on a liberal scale were
executed. Madrid was ornamented with bridges, aqueducts, hospitals, the
Museum, the Armory,--stately structures which even now challenge our
admiration, not less by the excellence of their designs than by the
richness of their collections and the enlightened taste which they infer
at this early period.

[Sidenote: THE COURT REMOVED TO MADRID.]

In the opinion of its inhabitants, indeed we may say of the nation,
Madrid surpassed, not only every other city in the country, but in
Christendom. "There is but one Madrid," says the Spanish proverb.[484]
"When Madrid is the theme, the world listens in silence!"[485] In a
similar key, the old Castilian writers celebrate the glories of their
capital,--the nursery of wit, genius, and gallantry,--and expatiate on
the temperature of a climate propitious alike to the beauty of the women
and the bravery of the men.[486]

Yet, with all this lofty panegyric, the foreigner is apt to see things
through a very different medium from that through which they are seen by
the patriotic eye of the native. The traveller to Madrid finds little to
praise in a situation where the keen winds from the mountains come laden
with disease, and where the subtle atmosphere, to use one of the
national proverbs, that can hardly put out a candle, will extinguish the
life of a man;[487] where the capital, insulated in the midst of a
dreary expanse of desert, seems to be cut off from sympathy, if not from
intercourse, with the provinces;[488] and where, instead of a great
river that might open to it a commerce with distant quarters of the
globe, it is washed only by a stream,--"the far-famed Manzanares,"--the
bed of which in summer is a barren watercourse. The traveller may well
doubt whether the fanciful advantage, so much vaunted, of being the
centre of Spain, is sufficient to compensate the manifold evils of such
a position, and even whether those are far from truth who find in this