To keep the people employed, the temporary authorities rather encouraged the building and strengthening of barricades. The Spanish nation has been so often cheated out of the results of its insurrections, and has so repeatedly beheld a half-effected revolution converted into a reaction, that it was determined this time to guard against such delusions and disappointments. Such, at least, was the case in Madrid. Under a broiling sun, they toiled as if life and death depended on their exertions. Most of the barricades, at first constructed of very heterogeneous materials, and without much regard to symmetry, were taken down, and rebuilt of paving-stones and earth. The operation was a great nuisance. The town was continually in a cloud of dust; passage through the streets, obstructed by these temporary fortifications, was extremely slow; at night one risked breaking his legs by tumbling into holes, or his shins by stumbling over huge blocks of stone and other building materials. The result of all this labour and inconvenience was, that, by the 25th of July, Madrid contained upwards of two hundred and eighty barricades of the first magnitude, each one of which was the centre of (on an average) eight or ten smaller redoubts and defences. Besides stones, of which the principal parapets were chiefly composed, the materials used were bricks, tiles, bags of sand, beams, mortar, diligences, private carriages, carts, and furniture. On the first days of the revolution, it was curious to observe how, in the haste and enthusiasm of the moment, good and even handsome furniture was taken out into the street by its owners to be knocked to pieces in the barricades. Flags and streamers adorned them all, and at nearly every one, raised upon altars covered with coloured cloths, were portraits of Espartero—horrible caricatures, many of them, but nevertheless the objects almost of adoration on the part of the people. After nightfall there were lights placed round these portraits, which in some instances were accompanied by others of O’Donnell, Dulce, and latterly (but only in a few cases) of the Queen, and music of every kind, from excellent bands down to a single cracked guitar, played behind the barricades, in front of which the people assembled in crowds. The revolution, serious enough at first, had now become a sort of festival. The people were too unsettled to return to their customary occupations; business of all kinds was suspended; the streets were continually crowded with men of the lower orders, armed, idle, but very well-conducted; whilst the better classes, to whom, now that the preliminary object of the revolution (the placing of Espartero at the head of affairs) was gained, the whole thing was an intolerable nuisance, longed for the arrival of the man whose presence alone would content the multitude, and restore Madrid to its normal condition.