It would be difficult to find a word which would convey a true impression of a town, but if we were limited to the employment of a single term to describe Madrid, _rococo_ would suggest itself. The capital is elegant, fanciful, and yet stately. It does not smile like Seville, nor frown like Toledo, and yet it is neither sad nor stern. Granada and Cordova sleep. Madrid never seems to slumber; it is one of the most restless places upon the earth. It has the dignity of Castile and the frivolity of Paris; it exhibits the congestion of London in parts within its gates, but it has no dingy, sunless slums, and few signs of an ugly indigence. There is the luxurious Madrid of the aristocracy and the hidalgo, the Madrid that lives for fashion and pleasure, and there is the Madrid of the shopkeeper and the lower middle class. Beneath these strata are the wage-earners, the mechanics and labourers, a frugal and usually industrious community. There is also the Madrid of a large nondescript class composed of mendicants, thieves, hawkers, and the rabble and derelicts of society. There is the Madrid of the casinos, some intellectual, others merely social or sporting. The city has its coteries of ardent politicians, military men, financiers, reformers, freethinkers, revolutionaries, and its societies of the scientific, learned, and artistic. There is no specific character which one can point to as typical of Madrid. One passion is, however, manifest throughout all classes--the love of bull-fighting. Seville is the school of the torero; Madrid is the scene of his valour in the arena. The bull-fighter is the idol of the populace. In the cafés of the Puerta del Sol, or in the ring of the Plaza de Toros, his figure is one that arouses the deepest interest and warmest admiration. An eminent jockey in England has his host of admirers, but he cannot command that universal respect which is accorded to the _espada_ in Spain. The great bull-fighter is the pet of Madrid society, the demi-god of the populace, the model of the “sports” of the city.