The eastern custom of building houses on the four sides of an open area is so general in Andalusia, that, till my first journey to Madrid, I confess, I was perfectly at a loss to conceive a habitable dwelling in any other shape. The houses are generally two stories high, with a gallery, or _corredor_, which, as the name implies, _runs_ along the four, or at least the three sides of the _Pátio_, or central square, affording an external communication between the rooms above stairs, and forming a covered walk over the doors of the ground-floor apartments. These two suites of rooms are a counterpart to each other, being alternately inhabited or deserted in the seasons of winter and summer. About the middle of October every house in Seville is in a complete bustle for two or three days. The lower apartments are stripped of their furniture, and every chair and table--nay, the kitchen vestal, with all her laboratory--are ordered off to winter quarters. This change of habitation, together with mats laid over the brick-floors, thicker and warmer than those used in summer, is all the provision against cold, which is made in this country. A flat and open brass pan of about two feet diameter, raised a few inches from the ground by a round wooden frame, on which, those who sit near it, may rest their feet, is used to burn charcoal made of brushwood, which the natives call _cisco_. The fumes of charcoal are injurious to health; but such is the effect of habit, that the natives are seldom aware of any inconvenience arising from the choking smell of their brasiers.