pleasant to indulge oneself by an occasional visit to a knacker’s yard, as to sit quietly looking on whilst a furious bull rips up a miserable beast, usually blindfolded, in order that it may not move from the spot at which the _picador_ chooses to receive the attack; but this part of the performance over, there is little that is disgusting, and a great deal that is singularly exciting and skilful. The men seldom seem to be in any real danger of being caught by the bull, and nothing can be cleverer than the way in which one of the _chulos_ will dance before him half across the arena, always avoiding his charge by a hair’s-breadth only, or in which one of the _banderilleros_, seated in a chair, will plant his two arrows exactly on each side of the bull just as he stoops to toss him, and the next instant jump out of his seat, whilst the chair is dashed to atoms by the furious beast. I felt, however, that one bull-fight was enough for me; the treatment of each bull is of necessity the same, and the mules have no sooner galloped out of one door trailing the dead bull and his victims out of the arena, than another dashes in from the opposite side, only to meet the same fate. The way in which the bulls come in is very striking: they rush in madly like wild beasts, and generally charge rapidly at one of the _picadors_ or _chulos_. I asked a Spaniard how this was managed, and he explained that in the den from which they emerge they are goaded with sharp-pointed spears just before the doors are opened, and of course come into the arena mad with rage! The object of bull-fights seems to be generally charitable--in the sense that charity bazaars are so. At Valencia, where they have recently erected an arena which almost rivals in size the Roman amphitheatres, the work has been done by the trustees of the hospitals, and this seemed to be usually the destination of the receipts whenever I saw them advertized. That it is possible to have a bull-fight of even a worse kind than the Spanish I learnt at Nîmes, where the cicerone showing me the amphitheatre explained that they had a bull-fight every Sunday, but never killed their bulls--only goaded them week after week! Whilst I was at Madrid I made an excursion to Alcalá de Henares, the seat of Cardinal Ximenes’ famous university, under the impression that I should find a good deal to reward me. In this, however, I was disappointed, as the churches are mostly works of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the whole place is decayed, unprosperous, and uncared for, without being picturesque and venerable.