I was prepared to find much more wretchedness and poverty among the lower orders in Madrid, than is apparent--I might perhaps say, than exists there. There is much misery in Madrid, but it lies among a different class, of whom I shall have occasion to speak afterwards: at present, I speak merely of the lowest class of the inhabitants, among whom, in every great city, there is always a certain proportion of miserably poor. I purposely walked several times into the lowest quarters of the city, but I never encountered any such pictures of poverty and wretchedness as are to be found abundantly in Paris, London, Dublin, Manchester, and other great towns of France and England. When the king arrived in Madrid from _La Granja_, there were at least 10,000 persons present at his _entrée_; and upon the occasion of the queen’s accouchement, there were three times that number in the court of the palace; and yet I did not see a single person in rags--scarcely even a beggar. It is possible, however, that a cloak may conceal much wretchedness; and of this I had one day an example. Sauntering one morning in the retired part of the Prado, in front of the botanical garden, I sat down upon the low wall that supports the iron railing: a man, with a decent cloak wrapped around him, sat a few paces distant, seemingly in a reverie; he happened to have taken his seat upon some prohibited place, and one of the guards, unperceived by him, walked forward, and tapped him on the shoulder with his musket: whether the sudden start which this intrusion occasioned had unfastened the cloak, or whether he had accidentally let go his hold of it, is of no consequence; but the cloak dropped half off his body, and I discovered that it was his _only_ garment, excepting his neckcloth: the man was no beggar; he hastily replaced the cloak, and walked away. He was probably one of that class who, in Madrid, sacrifice all to the exterior; or, possibly, one of those very few Castilians, who yet inherit old Castilian pride, and who would die rather than ask an alms.