George Borrow loved Spain well, but he loved not the solitude in which Philip V. found respite from the cares of State and from the dominating personality of Elizabeth Farnese. ‘So great is the solitude of La Granja,’ he writes, ‘that wild boars from the neighbouring forests, and especially from the beautiful pine-covered mountain which rises like a cone directly behind the palace, frequently find their way into the streets and squares, and whet their tusks against the pillars of the porticos.’ But at the time this was written the country was overrun with Carlists. Candido lurked in the undergrowth, Garcia and his fellow-conspirators had driven Queen Cristina from the palace, and nine-tenths of the inhabitants of the town had fled. Even in the season La Granja may be described as solitary, but it is not desolate, to quote another word that Borrow employed to describe it. Situated at an altitude of nearly four thousand feet above the sea, it has been styled, with much truth, a ‘castle in the air.’ Surrounded as it is by lovely woods, which extend for leagues in every direction, by gardens, lakes, and streams, the Palace of San Ildefonso, in the month of flowers, is a paradise and a miracle combined. For the site, although not exactly hit upon at random, was selected with a royal inconsequence of the difficulty and expense involved in the labour of transforming a monkish farmhouse into a palace rivalling the glittering creations of Versailles. The Bourbon Philip V., like his Austrian predecessor Philip II., conceived a craving for solitude, and while hunting at Valsain in 1720 he observed La Granja (the Grange, or farmhouse) of the Segovian monks of El Parral, and coveted it for a place of retirement. Philip’s nature had undergone a great change since he entered Spain, a handsome, resolute soldier, in 1701. His first wife, Marie Louise of Savoy, had been at his side during the troublous, early days of his reign, and in 1714, when Spain was at peace for the first time since he assumed the crown, his wife died. Under the stress of warlike excitement and the gentle, sustaining sympathy and influence of Marie Louise, Philip had proved himself a prince of high spirit, determination, and resource, but under the domination of the ambitious, intriguing, masterful Elizabeth he lost all initiative and sunk into a moody inaction, which subsequently developed into lethargic insanity. It has been said that, personally, Philip did little good for Spain, and it must be admitted that, when it was most incumbent on him to play the man, he weakly involved the country in prolonged wars at the bidding of his wife. If the national revenue increased enormously during his reign, the expenditure was more than proportionately increased in the construction of the three palaces he left to Spain and in the extravagant collection of works of art with which he furnished them. From Versailles he had brought the love of letters which prompted him to found the Royal