The gardens with which Philip V. surrounded his palace cover an area of three hundred and sixty acres, and are the finest in the kingdom, while even the admirers of Versailles admit that La Granja has the more amazing fountains. From the grand walk one looks out across a panorama of the rocks and forests of New Castile, or gazes down upon the beautiful extravagancies of these literally hand-made gardens. The formal design of the ground-plan, the regularity of its well-ordered box avenues and mazes, the artificiality of its numerous fountains, its marble vases and statuary, and the baths and summer-houses that rise out of the dwarf-like vegetation, are all in striking contrast with the wild grandeur of the distant scenery. Yet, artificial as the aspect undoubtedly is, the gardens are a sheer delight, for beyond the flower-beds are masses of yellow broom and springing ferns, and the grass is a blaze of wild hyacinths, forget-me-nots, cowslips, and periwinkle. Higher up the mountain, to where the sky-line shows, 3000 feet above the palace, are woods of chestnut trees, oaks, elms, and innumerable pines, in which myriad butterflies of every hue disport themselves, and scores of streams trickle down to feed the royal fountains in the gardens below. The statues representing Lucretia, Bacchus, Apollo, Daphne, America, Ceres, and Milo, and many others, are of no great artistic value; while the fountains, to the number of twenty-six, are unique. The Fama, which throws up its waters to a height of 130 feet, is the most renowned; and from another fountain, compact of sculptured flowers and fruits, forty spouts send out their two-score jets 80 feet high. The Cenador is a single vast cascade of gleaming water from the mountain snows. Then there are the Ranas (Frogs), Ocho Calles, Canastillo, Tres Gracias, and the Neptuno, at which, says M. Bourgoin, the Egotist read Virgil and quoted ‘quos ego.’ Last of all, there is the wonderful Baño de Diana, to which reference has already been made. Here, where Art is truly French, and Nature is truly Spanish, where even Nature conceives in bleak discomfort for eight months in each year to bring forth four months of flowers and faërie, the King of Spain and his English bride retired to surroundings amid which a honeymoon will not be forgotten. Madrid has its magnificent royal palaces; El Pardo boasts its wondrous tapestries; Aranjuez its gardens, and Rio Frio its orchards; El Escorial is the eighth wonder of the world, and Miramar looks over the yellowest of golden sands into the bluest of blue waters; but La Granja, in the Guadarrama Mountains, is that place apart where lovers may find a bower ‘Of coolest foliage, musical with birds’; and here one may listen to ‘The murmurs of low fountains that gush forth I’ the midst of roses!’