PLATE XII. _LEON._ PATIO OF THE CASA DE LOS GUSMANES. PALACES, such as supply our twelfth illustration, are now rarely occupied in Spain by one family only. Instead of serving as the place of general rendezvous for the dependants and intimate friends only of the aristocratic proprietor, the Patios are now usually peopled with men, women and children belonging to the numerous families, between whom the occupation of the Palace, sadly fallen from its high estate, is divided. Instead of the mansions being guarded by a grand inquisitor in the shape of a porter, with armed servants within hail, with almost more than Oriental jealousy, as in the old days, he who will, may usually find entrance or exit unheeded, passing but as one more or one less of the hundreds who go to and fro in the course of the day to the various apartments which are frequently let and sublet, at ridiculously low rents, to poor occupants who can afford to pay no other. Poverty, in fact, revels in halls where magnificence once reigned supreme. It is no easy task for the imagination to repeople such grand old residences with the stately Hidalgoes and Señoras, who once occupied and maintained them with scrupulous care and princely dignity. Happily, the Countess d'Aulnois comes to our aid with her lively account of the dwelling at Madrid of the Duchess of Terra Nueva, appointed Camerera-Mayor to the young Queen, in 1679; and her picturesque sketch may be freely accepted as expressing the general style in which families of dignity, such as the Guzmanes, magnates of Leon, lived during the plenitude of Spanish wealth and power.