More than seven hundred years have passed since Oviedo was the proud capital of the Kingdoms of Las Asturias, Leon, and Castile. Segovia, though no longer great, has still all the appurtenances of greatness, and and with her granite massiveness and austerity, she remains an aristocrat even among the aristocracy of Spanish cities. Zamora, which has a history dating from time almost without date, was the key of Leon and the centre of the endless wars between the Moors and the Christians, which raged round it from the eighth to the eleventh centuries. In this volume the author has striven to re-create the ancient greatness of these six cities, and has preserved their memories in a wealth of excellent and interesting illustrations. VALENCIA AND MURCIA A GLANCE AT AFRICAN SPAIN, WITH 300 ILLUSTRATIONS Every traveller to the fertile Provinces which form the subject of this volume has been forcibly impressed by their outward resemblance to the more favoured parts of Northern Africa. And here, only to a degree less than in Andalusia, the Moors made themselves very much at home, and have left behind them ineffaceable impressions. In this delightful region the dusky invaders established themselves at Valencia, which they dubbed the City of Mirth. The history of the land is alike a fevered dream of mediævalism. Across its pages flit the shadowy forms of Theodomir, and the Cid and Jaime lo Conqueridor, standing out against a back-ground of serried hosts and flaming cities. The people to-day are true children of the sun, passionate, vivacious, physically well proportioned. The country is a terrestrial paradise, where the flowers ever blossom and the sun ever shines. To-day the Valencian supplements the bounty of Nature by enterprise and industry. His ports pulsate with traffic, and side by side with memorials of the life of a thousand years ago, modern social Spain may be studied at Alicante and El Cabanal, the Brighton and Trouville of the Peninsula. * * * * * _UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_ THE ROYAL TAPESTRIES AT MADRID A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE COLLECTION OF BEAUTIFUL TAPESTRIES IN THE ROYAL PALACE AT MADRID. WITH OVER 200 PLATES The Royal Palace at Madrid contains the most valuable and interesting collection of Tapestries in Europe. These were for the most part woven in Flanders, some in the early fifteenth century, at a time when the industry in that country had reached its zenith. At a later period the work of the Flemish artists was imitated in Spain itself with no little success. Among the designers of these superb works of art were Quentin Matsys, Pieter Breughel, and the Divine Raphael himself. Not artistically only but historically the collection is of rare interest. SPANISH ARMS AND ARMOUR A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE ROYAL ARMOURY AT MADRID. WITH 386 PLATES