But it is not difficult to assign plausible reasons for the fact, that the utterly destitute form but a very trifling proportion of the inhabitants of Madrid. Madrid lives by the court; it is said that the _employées_, including all grades, and the military, form one fourth part of the whole inhabitants. The professional persons, especially those connected with the law, form a large body; the friars and priests, a still larger. In Madrid, too, are assembled the greater number of the nobles and rich proprietors; so that more than one half of the inhabitants live upon their salaries and rents. We have then to consider the great number of tradespeople, artificers, and shopkeepers required to supply the wants of the former classes; add to these, the common labourers, servants, market people, itinerant venders, porters, water carriers, fruiterers, and the seminaries, hospitals, and prisons; and if, as is said to be the case, the employées, the military, the professional men, and all their families, together with priests and friars, amount to 80,000 persons, we may easily account for the other 80,000, without the necessity of filling up a blank with the utterly destitute. Indeed, the lowest orders in Madrid, are the water-carriers and fruiterers; and these are not a fixed population; many belong to the neighbouring villages, and to the fruit countries bordering on the Tagus; and in the winter months, these leave the capital. There is always a resource for the most destitute in Madrid, in the trade of a water-carrier: he weaves a little basket of rushes; pays a couple of reals for a couple of glasses, and he is at once equipped as a vender of aqua fresca. Madrid has no manufacture, so that labour is not attracted to the capital, to be afterwards subject to the vicissitudes of trade; nor is there any spirit of enterprise, whose caprices demand a constant supply of superabundant labour. These may, or may not, be deemed sufficient reasons for the fact I have wished to account for,--the reader may probably be able to add others. The fact, however, is certain, that in no city of Europe ranking with Madrid, is there so little apparent wretchedness.