Take a case in point. We remember calling on a Spaniard who held the highest office in a chief city of Andalucia. As we came into his cabinet a cloaked personage was going out; the great man’s table was covered with gold ounces, which he was shovelling complacently into a drawer, gloating on the glorious haul. “Many ounces, Excellency,” said we. “Yes, my friend,” was his reply--“_no quiero comer mas patatas_,--I do not intend to dine any more on potatoes.” This gentleman, during the _Sistema_, or Riego constitution, had, with other loyalists, been turned out of office; and, having been put to the greatest hardships, was losing no time in taking prudent and laudable precautions to avert any similar calamity for the future. His practices were perfectly well known in the town, where people simply observed, “_Está atesorando_, he is laying up treasures,”--as every one of them would most certainly have done, had they been in his fortunate position. Rich and honest Britons, therefore, should not judge too hardly of the sad shifts, the strange bed-fellows, with which want makes the less provided Spaniards acquainted. _Donde no hay abundancia, no hay observancia._ The empty sack cannot stand upright, nor was ever a sack made in Spain into which gain and honour could be stowed away together; _honra y provecho, no caben en un saco o techo_; here virtue itself succumbs to poverty, induced by more than half a century of mis-government, let alone the ruin caused by Buonaparte’s invasion, to which domestic troubles and civil wars have been added. [Sidenote: A QUESTION OF DAYS.]