fields, with their knees up to their ears, like so many grasshoppers; and their skin is so well bronzed that one can hardly believe them to be of European blood. They are said to be vindictive and passionate, but they are also, so far as I saw them, very lively, merry, and talkative. The farms appear to be very large, and when I passed the farmers were hard at work threshing their rice. This is all done by horses and mules on circular threshing-floors. In many of the farms eight or ten pair of horses may be seen at work at the same time on as many threshing-floors, and the effect of such a scene is striking and novel. As we went into Valencia we passed on the right the enormous new Plaza de Toros, said to be the finest in Spain. Railroads will, I suppose, rather tend to develop the national love for this institution, and this theatre must have been built with some such impression, for otherwise it is difficult to believe that a city of a hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants could build a theatre capable of containing about a tenth of the whole population! The national vehicle of Valencia is the _tartana_, a covered cart on two wheels, with a slight attempt only at springs, and rendered gay by the crimson curtains which are hung across the front. Jumping into one of these, we soon found ourselves at the excellent Fonda del Cid, whose title reminds us that we are on classic ground in this city of Valencia del Cid. The Cid took the city from the Moors after a siege of twenty months, in A.D. 1094, established himself here, and ruled till his death, in A.D. 1099. The Moors then regained possession for a short time, but in A.D. 1238 or 1239 it was finally re-taken from them by the Spaniards. It is hardly to be expected that anything would remain of Christian work earlier than A.D. 1095, or, more probably, than A.D. 1239, and this I found to be the case. The cathedral, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, is a church of only moderate interest, its interior having been overlaid everywhere with columns, pilasters, and cornices of plaster, and the greater part of the exterior being surrounded so completely with houses, that no good view can be obtained of it. The ground-plan is, however, still so far untouched as to be perfectly intelligible. It has a nave and aisles of four bays, transepts projecting one bay beyond the aisles, and a lofty lantern or Cimborio over the Crossing. The choir is one bay only in length, and has a three-sided apse. An aisle of the same width as that of the nave is continued round the choir, and has the rare arrangement of two polygonal chapels opening in each of its bays. The vaulting compartments in the aisle are therefore cincopartite, those throughout the rest of the church being quadripartite. A grand Chapter-house stands detached to the south of the west bay of the nave, and an octagonal steeple, called “El Micalete,” abuts against the north-west angle of the west front.