As buildings, the hospitals are generally very large; but the space is as thinly tenanted as the unpeopled wastes of Spain. In England wards are wanting for patients--in Spain, patients for wards. The names of some of the greatest hospitals are happily chosen; that of Seville, for instance, is called _La Sangre_, the blood, or _Las Cinco Llagas_, the five bleeding wounds of our Saviour, which are sculptured over the portal like bunches of grapes. Blood is an ominous name for this house and home of _Sangrado_, where the lancet, like the Spanish knife, gives no quarter. In instruments of life and death, this establishment resembled a Spanish arsenal, being wanting in everything at the critical moment; its dispensary, as in the shop of Shakspere’s apothecary, presented a beggarly account of empty pill-boxes, while as to a visiting Brodie, the part of that Hamlet was left out. The grand hospital at Madrid is called _el general_, the General, and the medical assistance is akin to the military co-operation of such Spanish generals as Lapeña and Venegas, who in the moment of need left Graham at Barrosa, and the Duke at Talavera, without a shadow of aid. There is nothing new in this, if the old proverb tells truth, _socorros de España, o tarde o nunca_; Spanish succours arrive late or never. In cases of battle, war, and sudden death as in peace, the professional men, military or medical, are apt to assist in the meaning of the French word _assister_, which signifies to be present without taking any part in what is going on. And this applies, where knocks on the head are concerned, not to the medical men only, but to the universal Spanish nation; when any one is stabbed in the streets, he will infallibly bleed to death, unless the authorities arrive in time to pick him up, and to bind up his wounds: every one else--Englishmen excepted, we describe things witnessed--passes on the other side; not from any fear at the sight of blood, nor abhorrence of murder, but from the dread which every Spaniard feels at the very idea of getting entangled in the meshes of _La Justicia_, whose ministers lay hold of all who interfere or are near the body as principals or witnesses, and Spanish justice, if once it gets a man into its fangs, never lets him go until drained of his last farthing. [Sidenote: COLLEGE OF SAN CARLOS.]