So little has it been the fashion hitherto to explore the North of Spain in search of artistic treasures, that it was with somewhat more than usual of the feeling that I was engaged in an adventure that I left Bayonne on my first journey West of the Pyrenees. Yet, in truth, so far as I have seen there is little in the way of adventure to anticipate even there in these matter-of-fact days; and, some slight personal inconvenience excepted, there is nothing to prevent any traveller of ordinary energy doing all that I did with complete success, and an uncommon amount of pleasure. For if there are no serious perils to be encountered, there is great novelty in almost everything that one sees; and whether we wish to study the people and their customs, or to visit the country and explore it in search of striking and picturesque scenery, or to examine, as I did, its treasures of ancient art, we shall find in every one of these respects so much that is unlike what we are used to, so much that is beautiful, and so much that is ancient and venerable by historic association, that we must be dull indeed if we do not enjoy our journey with the fullest measure of enjoyment. Indeed the drawbacks about which so much is usually said and written--the difficulty of finding inns fit to sleep in, or food fit to eat--seem to me to be most enormously exaggerated. It is true that I have purposely avoided travelling over the well-beaten Andalusian corner of Spain; and it is there, I suppose, that most English ideas of Spain and the Spaniards are formed. But in those parts to which my travels have taken me, but in which English travellers are not known so well as they are in Andalusia, I have certainly seldom found any difficulty in obtaining such creature-comforts as are essential. Somewhat, it is true, depends upon the time of year in which a journey is undertaken; for in the spring, when the climate is most enjoyable, and the country gloriously green and bright with wavy crops of corn, the traveller has to depend entirely upon the cook for his food; and has no other resource even where the cookery is intolerable to his English sense of smell, taste, and sight! But in the autumn, if he chances to travel, as I have twice done, just when the grapes are ripening, he may, if he choose, live almost entirely, and with no little advantage to his health, on grapes and bread, the latter being always pure, light, and good to a degree of which our English bakers have no conception; and the former tasting as none but Spanish grapes do, and often costing nothing, or at any rate never more than a merely nominal sum.