Few towns in Europe are situated amid so many natural hindrances to development as Madrid. It stands south and east of the bleak mountains of central Spain, upon one of many exposed and almost treeless uplands, where the winds of winter and early spring sting and bite, and the sun in summer sheds pitiless heat, which dries up the blood and disposes to languor. So fickle is the climate of this lofty region that, even in the height of August, it is never quite safe to discard the _capa_ after sundown, for, during the hottest day, a sinister and gelid breath may assail one at the street corner with a menace of chill to the lungs. Yet Madrid is not unhealthy. It is dry, invigorating, swept by mountain breezes, bathed for long periods in brightest sunlight, and free from the contamination and depression of smoke. With proper provision against the variations in temperature, one may enjoy a full measure of health and live to an advanced age in this city of the hills. The more dangerous kinds of fever are uncommon in Madrid; the chief risk to health is in the sudden keen air that brings a shiver when the body has been scorched by the sun, and one turns to seek the shady side of the street. Rio and Cabarras, two Spanish historians, speak of the bad odours and the dirt of Madrid in the seventeenth century. This reproach was, however, removed in the time of Henry Swinburne, an intelligent traveller, who visited the city in 1776. “The appearance of Madrid,” writes Swinburne, “is grand and lively; noble streets, good houses, and excellent pavement, as clean as it was once dirty.” In earlier days it was not thought necessary to wash the thoroughfares, because the purity of the air was an effective antidote to the evil of the filth and the smells. Rio, for example, advances the opinion that the invigorating mountain breezes are a sufficient purification. The clear quality of the Madrid sunshine is a compensation for the treachery of its winds. There are but few sunless days. “The sky at Madrid is almost always clear and serene,” wrote Laborde, in 1809. The heights of the Guadarrama are too far from the city to throw their shade upon it, and the brilliant sunlight pours down and floods the streets and squares, and penetrates every dwelling. Looking upon the wide, rolling, hillocky country from the outskirts of the city, you have a marvellous vista, full of colour, glow, and the grandeur of huge sunlight spaces. The sky is almost perennially deep blue; but at times there are vast masses of purple cloud above the horizon, whose passing shadow produces changing effects of light and darkness upon the far-stretching landscape, and adds a sternness to the sierra.