The favourite departed, and is perhaps already as completely forgotten by the person most interested in retaining him here as he appears to be by everybody else. He is not likely to be recalled, so long as Espartero is in power, and it is to be hoped he will not be replaced. The clearance of the court was left for the Duke de la Victoria, who assumed the office of governor of the palace, and speedily dismissed the titled and embroidered, but impure, crowd that haunted its halls and avenues. Availing myself of the roving and desultory license conceded to the letter-writer, I step back a few weeks to note some small but not uninteresting circumstances, which I find I have omitted to mention. When O’Donnell’s outbreak occurred, not only were the civil guards removed from their duty on the roads and concentrated in the capital, and at other points, to act in bodies as troops against the insurgents and against the people, but the numerous police of Madrid became too much engrossed by their political avocations to heed the ordinary objects of their solicitude. The proper regulation of the streets was neglected, and a prodigious swarm of beggars, emerging from their habitual lurking-places, spread itself over the town. The streets were infested by the most revolting deformities. The least disagreeable section of the mendicant mob was that consisting of the blind men, who, always numerous in Madrid, were now apparently in redoubled strength. There is an independent spirit amongst these _ciegos_, and they seldom beg, but poke their way about with a big stick, or are led by a friend, and sell newspapers, flying sheets, and extraordinary supplements. Since the revolution there has been much work for them, and from seven in the morning until late at night one hears their discordant cries, consisting generally of the names of new newspapers, (many have been started within the last month), the _Esparterista_, the _Independencia_, the _Sentinela del Pueblo_, or of the announcement of the “latest news from the palace,” “the departure of the _tia Cristina_,” or “the life of the robber Sartorius,”—all for two _cuartos_, or one halfpenny. It were unjust to these benighted dispensers of intelligence to class them amongst the beggars, although they certainly are a nuisance, owing to their straightforward manner of perambulation, which compels everybody to keep out of their way who does not desire to have their heavy feet stamped upon his, or their protruded stick thrust against his shins. But the blind are quite agreeable and ornamental compared with the maimed, the diseased, the shrivelled, the distorted, who lie under walls and upon the staircases of public buildings, station themselves at street corners, ride about on donkeys, and everywhere disgust you with their nauseous presence, and pester you with their piteous whine. The Spaniards are charitable—that is to say, they are great alms-givers—and this of course encourages street-begging.