and as lovely in their effects as they are aggravating to one who wants to be able to make sketches and notes within them. Leaving San Sebastian at mid-day, we skirted the bay, busy with folk enjoying themselves in the water after the fashion of Biarritz. The country was wild, beautiful, and mountainous all the way to Mondragon. At Vergara there was a fair going on, and the narrow streets were crowded with picturesquely dressed peasants; everywhere in these parts fine, lusty, handsome, and clean, and to my mind the best looking peasantry I have ever seen. In the evening the villages were all alive, the young men and women dancing a wild, indescribable dance, rather gracefully, and with a good deal of waving about of their arms. The music generally consisted of a tambourine, but once of two drums and a flute; and the ball-room was the centre of the road, or the little _plaza_ in the middle of the village. At midnight there was another halt at Vitoria, where an hour was whiled away over chocolate and _azucarillos_--delicate compositions of sugar which melt away rapidly in water, and make a superior kind of _eau sucré_; and again at sunrise we stopped at Miranda del Ebro for the examination of luggage before entering Castile. Close to the bridge, on the opposite side of the Ebro to Miranda, is a church of which I could just see by the dim light of the morning that it was of some value as an example of Romanesque and Early Pointed work. The apse, of five sides, has buttresses with two half-columns in front of each, and an arch thrown across from buttress to buttress carries the cornice and gives a great appearance of massiveness to the window arches with which it is concentric. The south doorway is of very fine Early Pointed style, with three shafts on each jamb, and five orders in the arch.