It has often seemed to me that every city belongs to one particular age. This being a fancy contrary to fact, I will put it this way--that in every city there is always some one period of human history more readily recoverable than any other. This may not be the period which has left its mark most conspicuously on the physiognomy of the place; more probably it will be determined by your own preconceptions, derived from study or chance reading. John Addington Symonds observed that an island near Venice, the name of which I have forgotten, immediately recalled to him not the great days of the Republic with which it had an historical connection, but the later and decadent days of bag-wig and hair powder. At Cadiz I could have wished to think of the Phœnicians, thus hardily adventuring into the wide ocean; or of Drake and his gentlemen adventurers, "bound wrist to bar, all for red iniquity"; but instead I fancied myself back in the 'thirties of last century, and thought of De Musset and his "Andalouse" and his lovely Spanish girls. Is it possible that Andalusia in those days of our grandfathers _was_ the Andalusia of the Romanticists? At Cadiz, I beguiled myself into believing so--why, I cannot explain. Perhaps it was due to the unexpected appearance of a native--a distinctively Andalusian--costume in the streets. Nowhere else in Spain is the mantilla more conspicuous or more gorgeous. A French writer gives a selection of toilettes worn at a _Corrida de toros_, which, as I never assisted at one of these functions in Cadiz, I repeat: "All pink, coral necklace, white lace mantilla, big bunches of carnations in the hair and corsage; a blond head seen beneath a transparent mantilla, like a frail spider's web, red corsage and white gown; coral ear-rings, with bunches of roses; all black, with a white mantilla; all white, with a black mantilla; pale green gown with a blue bolero and white roses; shawl draped, brocaded, with a wealth of carnations in the hair; black dress and mantilla, violets in the hair; gold coloured shawl, embroidered with red roses, comb like a tiara set with bright-hued flowers," etc., etc. With confections such as these dazzling the eyes, it is no wonder that I began to see visions of gentlemen in black silk tights, dark green frock coats, and snowy white cravats, stammering Castilian with a Parisian accent.