Such contrasts are very sharp in this city, where the streets exist simply for folk to dwell in, the squares and paseos for them to gather in and do their business. There are notable exceptions, it is true. There is no want of life in the Sierpes, the narrow street which is the Strand and Charing Cross of Seville. Here you return again and again, feeling it is the focus of the city's life. Little better than a lane is the Sierpes, where no wheeled traffic can pass. It is amazingly dark in the summer, when awnings are drawn right across it from roof to roof, and penetrating into it from the sunny plaza, it is a little time before you can accustom your eyes to the shadow. Here are the best shops, the banks, and those elegant and ostentatious casinos, where the aristocracy and leisured class lounge and smoke, and survey at their ease the unceasing procession of passers by. There are cafés here of a different sort, some of which are frequented by the bull-fighters and their admirers. Here too may be seen in all his glory that peculiar type of Andalusian, the "Majo," a curious blend of the English "masher" the "sporting man" and the "troubadour"! The people sit in the cafés to see the others pass, and the others walk down the street to see the people in the cafés. This is a form of amusement and exercise common on the Continent, and acclimatized already at our English seaside towns. Selling lottery tickets is a great industry in the Sierpes, the sale of tickets for the next _Corrida de toros_ even more so. The boot-blacking saloons remind the American visitor of his native land. For his delectation the _New York Herald_ is displayed in the windows of the few booksellers. There is nothing about this gay little thoroughfare to remind us of the past. The history of Seville is more easily recoverable by the fancy, when you are seated by the Guadalquivir, in sight of the Torre del Oro, on the spot perhaps where George Borrow, in an unwonted fit of hysteria, wept over the beauty of the scene before him.