There are places of refuge and humane establishments in Madrid whither all destitute persons have a right to repair—whither, indeed, it is the duty of the police to compel them to betake themselves. But for some time past it can hardly be said that there has been any police in this capital; and I assure you that a walk through it is anything but a gratification, either to the eyes or the olfactories. It is full of strange, complicated, and most unfragrant odours, to which the puzzled and tortured nose involuntarily and in vain attempts to ascribe an origin. And it is plentifully besprinkled with objects that should never be seen out of an hospital. Here, seated or squatted on the pavement of one of the most crowded thoroughfares, is a wretch with an arm shrivelled to the bone; here another whose leg grows up behind his back, his foot appearing over his shoulder. Here is an unfortunate creature who almost reminds us of the days when lepers sat by the road-side and implored alms. A little farther on a man, in an old soldier’s coat, displays the hideous stump of his amputated leg; and in this narrow passage we run up against a boy leading a donkey, on which is stretched, upon his belly, a shapeless mass of humanity, his limbs naked, and every one of them in some way or other distorted and deformed. And here—haunting the narrow court that leads to the post-office, and whose asphalt pavement, most injudicious in this climate, grows sticky and stinking beneath the beams of the August sun—is a tall young fellow without any arms at all, who, in the names of many saints, entreats pity upon a _pobre joven_, unable to work, and expects you to put your coppers into his waistcoat pocket. As if political revolutions and vagabond music had some mysterious connection, the number of street bands, Italian harp-players, organ-grinders, and guitar-strummers, that have deafened us during the last six weeks, is something extraordinary. It was noticed by persons here that on one particular day, early in July, all these itinerant professors disappeared, and it was inferred that an outbreak was close at hand. But either the musicians had been falsely alarmed, or a general feast or fast held by them was the cause of the suspension of their hostilities against the tympanum of Madrid, for no insurrection occurred at that time, although we had not very long to wait for it.