I am not able to reconcile these opinions, and the experience of others, with my own; my advantages, considerable as they certainly were, could not be compared with those of the accredited representatives of government, who had resided many years in the country. It is a fact, however, that I had not been many days in Madrid, before I had the entrée of several Spanish houses, both in the higher and in the middle classes of society: this good fortune I may partly attribute to my intimacy with an _attaché_ of the Spanish embassy in London, who, grateful for the attentions he had received from my countrymen, repaid them in the manner most acceptable to me,--namely, by making me acquainted with a numerous circle of friends and relatives. His father, a member of the council of state, may easily be supposed to have possessed the power of assisting the inquiries of a traveller; and to him, and to my young friend, now secretary to one of the legations in Italy, I have to return my best thanks for a hundred civilities. It is the habits of the middle classes, that best interpret the condition and character of a people; and to these I mean at present to confine myself. I shall begin by giving the reader some idea of the interior of a Spanish house; but let me premise, that the houses in the different cities of Spain, bear scarcely any resemblance to each other: the houses of Madrid differ in almost every thing from those of Seville,--which, again, are in many respects different from the houses in Malaga and Valencia. These distinctions are sufficient to excuse a detail so apparently trifling, as the description of a house; because they arise from a distinction in the manners and habits of the people inhabiting the different provinces of Spain.