The next afternoon all the world crowds to the _Plaza de toros_. You need not ask the way; just launch into the tide, which in these Spanish affairs will assuredly carry you away. Nothing can exceed the gaiety and sparkle of a Spanish public going, eager and full-dressed, to the _fight_. They could not move faster were they running away from a real one. All the streets or open spaces near the outside of the arena present of themselves a spectacle to the stranger, and genuine Spain is far better to be seen and studied in the streets, than in the saloon. Now indeed a traveller from Belgravia feels that he is out of town, in a new world and no mistake; all around him is a perfect saturnalia, all ranks are fused in one stream of living beings, one bloody thought beats in every heart, one heart beats in ten thousand bosoms; every other business is at an end, the lover leaves his mistress unless she will go with him,--the doctor and lawyer renounce patients, briefs, and fees; the city of sleepers is awakened, and all is life, noise, and movement, where to-morrow will be the stillness and silence of death; now the bending line of the _Calle de Alcalá_, which on other days is broad and dull as Portland Place, becomes the aorta of Madrid, and is scarcely wide enough for the increased circulation; now it is filled with a dense mass coloured as the rainbow, which winds along like a spotted snake to its prey. Oh the din and dust! The merry mob is everything, and, like the Greek chorus, is always on the scene. How national and Spanish are the dresses of the lower classes--for their betters alone appear like Boulevard quizzes, or tigers cut out from our East end tailors’ pattern-book of the last new fashion; what _Manolas_, what reds and yellows, what fringes and flounces, what swarms of picturesque vagabonds, cluster, or alas, clustered, around _calesas_, whose wild drivers run on foot, whipping, screaming, swearing; the type of these vehicles in form and colour was Neapolitan; they alas! are also soon destined to be sacrificed to civilization to the ’bus and common-place cab, or vile fly. [Sidenote: FILLING THE THEATRE.]