Not every bull will do for the Plaza, and none but the fiercest are selected, who undergo trials from the earliest youth; the most celebrated animals come from Utrera near Seville, and from the same pastures where that eminent breeder of old Geryon, raised those wonderful oxen, which all but burst with fat in fifty days, and were “lifted” by the invincible Hercules. Señor _Cabrera_, the modern Geryon, was so pleased with Joseph Buonaparte, or so afraid, that he offered to him a hundred bulls, as a hecatomb for the rations of his troops, who, braver and hungrier than Hercules, would otherwise have infallibly followed the demigod’s example. The Manchegan bull, small, very powerful, and active, is considered to be the original stock of Spain; of this breed was “Manchangito,” the pet of the Visconde de Miranda, a tauromachian noble of Cordova, and who used to come into the dining-room, but, having one day killed a guest, he was destroyed after violent resistance on the part of the Viscount, and only in obedience to the peremptory mandate of the Prince of the Peace. The capital is supplied with animals bred in the valleys of the Jarama near Aranjuez, which have been immemorially celebrated. From hence came that _Harpado_, the magnificent beast of the magnificent Moorish ballad of Gazul, which was evidently written by a practical _torero_, and on the spot: the verses sparkle with daylight and local colour like a Velazquez, and are as minutely correct as a Paul Potter, while Byron’s “Bull-fight” is the invention of a foreign poet, and full of slight inaccuracies. The _encierro_, or the driving the bulls to the arena, is a service of danger; they are enticed by tame oxen, into a road which is barricadoed on each side, and then driven full speed by the mounted and spear-bearing peasants into the _Plaza_. It is an exciting, peculiar, and picturesque spectacle; and the poor who cannot afford to go to the bull-fight, risk their lives and cloaks in order to get the front places, and best chance of a stray poke _en passant_. [Sidenote: THE ENCIERRO.]