Thus in Spain, and especially in the hotter provinces, it is heat and not cold which is the enemy: what we call furniture--carpets, rugs, curtains, and so forth--would be a positive nuisance, would keep out the cool, and harbour plagues of vermin beyond endurance. The walls of the apartments are frequently, though simply, whitewashed: the uneven brick floors are covered in winter with a matting made of the “_esparto_,” rush, and called an “_estera_,” as was done in our king’s palaces in the days of Elizabeth: a low iron or wooden truckle bedstead, with coarse but clean sheets and clothes, a few hard chairs, perhaps a stiff-backed, most uncomfortable sofa, and a rickety table or so, complete the scanty inventory. The charges are moderate; about two dollars, or 8_s._ 6_d._, per head a-day, includes lodging, breakfast, dinner, and supper. Servants, if Spanish, are usually charged the half; English servants, whom no wise person would take on the Continent, are nowhere more useless, or greater incumbrances, than in this hungry, thirsty, tealess, beerless, beefless land: they give more trouble, require more food and attention, and are ten times more discontented than their masters, who have poetry in their souls; an æsthetic love of travel, for its own sake, more than counterbalances with them the want of material gross comforts, about which their pudding-headed four-full-meals-a-day attendants are only thinking. Charges are higher at Madrid, and Barcelona, a great commercial city, where the hotels are appointed more European-like, in accommodation and prices. Those who remain any time in a large town bargain with the innkeeper, or go into a boarding-house, “_casa de pupilos_,” or “_de huespedes_,” where they have the best opportunity of learning the Spanish language, and of obtaining an idea of national manners and habits. This system is very common. The houses may be known externally by a white paper ticket attached to the _extremity_ of one of the windows or balconies. This position must be noted; for if the paper be placed in the _middle_ of the balcony, the signal means only that lodgings are here to be let. Their charges are very reasonable. [Sidenote: CHANGES IN SPANISH INNS.]