the summer through.

CHAPTER V

MODERN MADRID

Madrid has grown out of all knowledge in the last thirty years. No one
who had not seen it since the time of Isabel II. would recognise it now,
and even then much had been done since Ferdinand VII. had come back from
his fawning and despicable captivity in France--where he had gloried in
calling himself a "French prince"--to act the despot in his own country.
The Liberal Ministers who, for short periods, had some semblance of
power during the regency of Cristina had done a little to restore the
civilisation and light established by Charles III., and wholly quenched
in the time of his unworthy and contemptible successors. But even in
1865, the Alcala Gate, standing where the Plaza de la Independencia is
now, formed one boundary of Madrid, the Gate of Atocha was still
standing at the end of the _paseo_ of that name, and the Gate of Sta.
Barbara formed another of the limits of the city. The Museo was
unfinished and only to be entered by a side door, encumbered with
builders' rubbish and half-hewn blocks of stone. The Paseo of la Fuente
Castellana ended the Prado, and not a house was to be seen beyond the
Mint, or outside the Gate of Alcala.

All the town outside these barriers has arisen since; the magnificent
viaduct across the Calle de Segovia, the Markets, the Parque de Madrid,
the Hippodrome, the present Plaza de Toros, all are new. The old Bull
Ring stood just outside the Alcala Gate, and all beyond it was open
country; no _casas palacias_ along the Fuente Castellana, no Barrio
Salamanca. Madrid has, however, always been a cheerful, noisy, stirring
city, full of life and the expression of animal spirits. In days not so
very long past the streets were filled with picturesque costumes of the
provinces, with gaily decorated mules and donkeys carrying immense loads
of hay or straw, or huge nets filled with melons or pumpkins, almost
hiding everything but the head and the feet of the animal; or a
smart-looking "Jacket" man from the country districts would go whistling
by, Asturians, Murcians, Gallegos, gypsies, _toreros_ in their brilliant
_traje_ Andaluz--always to be recognised by their tiny pigtails of hair,
and by their splendidly lithe and graceful carriage--all these jostling,
singing, chaffing each other, while the jingling bells on innumerable
horses, mules, donkeys, rang through the sunlit air, and made the Puerta
de Sol and the streets branching from it a