There is one very unpleasant thing connected with a promenade on the Prado, whether in a carriage or on foot; this is the necessity of paying honour to every branch of the royal family, however frequently they may pass along. Every carriage must stop, and those within must take off their hats, or if the carriage be open stand up also; and every person on foot is expected to suspend his walk, face-about, and bow, with his head uncovered. When the king passes, no one perhaps feels this to be a grievance; because, however little respect the king may in reality be entitled to from his subjects, it is felt to be nothing more than an act of common good breeding to take off one’s hat to a king; but I have fifty times seen all this homage paid to a royal carriage with a nurse and an infant--not an _infanta_--in it; and one evening I was absolutely driven from the Prado by the unceasing trouble of being obliged to acknowledge the royal presence every few minutes, the spouse of the Infante Don Francis having found amusement in cantering backward and forward during an hour at least. From the expected homage, no one is exempt: even the foreign ambassadors must draw up, rise, and uncover themselves, if but a sprig of royalty in the remotest degree, and of the tenderest age, happens to drive past. Both the British and the American Minister told me, that for that reason they never went to the Prado. The promenade continues long after dark; and on fine moonlight nights in the month of September, I have seen it continued without any diminution in the crowd until after ten o’clock; generally, however, when dusk begins to usher in darkness, and when the great object of going to the Prado is accomplished,--seeing and being seen--the crowd thins, and there is soon no remnant of it visible, excepting pairs, or single individuals, here and there, who have their reasons for remaining. In Madrid,--indeed throughout all Spain, nobody walks for pleasure; at all events no woman: and this fact is I think sufficient to account for the superiority of the Spanish women in the art of walking, without making it necessary for us to suppose any deficiency in elegance of limb or symmetry of form among the women of other countries. An Englishwoman walks for health; she puts on her bonnet, and a pair of strong shoes, and a shawl, and walks into the country; and the nature of the climate creates a necessity for walking fast; there is no one to look at her, and she thinks of nothing so little as her manner of walking: but a Spanish woman never walks for health or exercise; she never goes out but to go to the Paseo, and never without having paid the most scrupulous attention to her toilette. On the Paseo, she studies every step, because the object of going there is to be seen and admired, and the nature of the climate, obliges her to walk slow.