We were in the Arena at Arles. It was a splendid day--barring the Mistral, that windy nuisance, which, as it eddied through the antique and ample Roman corridors, brought to my recollection certain North-Westers experienced on a fine March day in Union Square. In fact, it was far too cold for sentimentalizing or tracing measurements. But the guardian, it seemed, had not latterly had much chance of exercising his vocation, and his tongue was too nimble to be frozen. And so at it he went. Only, being himself more interested in certain proceedings that had lately taken place within a boarded fence that now encloses the arena, than in historical or legendary lore, his subject was by many centuries more fresh than the ruins whereon we stood, sunning ourselves and crouching out of the wind's way. Arles, it appeared, had been favoured with a bull fight, real Spanish matadors doing the beastly honours; but to the credit of the city, be it said, the spectacle was received with intense disapprobation. The gentle Provencals, whose tastes are more Italian than Spanish, could not brook the sport dear to their fair Empress who sets fashions in Paris. Indeed, the beauteous Eugénie, I fear, will hold them to be the merest milk-sops, for when the grand climax of a disembowelled horse was exhibited before them, the Arlesians, male and female--in place of shouts of triumphant approval--gave vent to loud cries of shame and execration, and in short hissed the Spanish heroes incontinently from the scene of their performance.