In the upper and middle classes of society in Madrid, morals are at the lowest ebb: though veils are almost thrown aside, and serenades are rare, Spain is still the country of gallantry and intrigue. Want of education among the women, and the absence of moral and religious principle among the men, are the fruitful sources of this universal demoralization. In the education of a Spanish woman, all has reference to display; knowledge forms no part of it. The business of her life, is dress and show; and its object, admiration: this leads to gallantry, and all its train of consequences. It is impossible to walk into the street, or along the Prado, without perceiving even among children, that the rudiments of Spanish indiscretion are already laid. Little girls of the tenderest age shew by their gait and manner, that they are already initiated in the business of life. I have heard others, scarcely escaped from childhood, talk in a manner that would have made an English married woman blush,--and, to gather something even from infancy, I have heard a child five or six years old, ask its companion, how it could disregard appearance so much as to venture out without a proper _ceinture_. In married life, I have reason to think that infidelity is more universal than in Italy; but the origin of it is different, and the thing is differently managed in the two countries. It is a great error to imagine--as some old writers upon Spain, and accurate writers in other respects, have asserted--that there is any connivance in Spain on the part of the husband: Spanish husbands, with few exceptions, are too proud to bargain for their own dishonour. While I was in Madrid, two instances occurred, in which husbands murdered their wives in fits of jealousy: in neither of these cases was the thing sifted to the bottom; because it was known that in doing this the villany of two priests would have been brought to light. The _Cortejo_ of Spain is by no means the _Cisesbeo_ of Italy. The _liaison_ in Spain is a secret one; it has not originated in interest or vanity, but in passion; and the greatest pains are taken to conceal it from the husband, and even (intimates excepted) from the world. There are not in Madrid the same opportunities for the formation and prosecution of intrigue, as in Seville and the cities of the south. In these, the gardens and summer houses,--the walls of both forming a part of the street,--are particularly favourable to the serenade, the billet-doux, and their recompense. In Madrid, opportunities are more precarious: the mass, the street, the balcony, are the only places of rendezvous; and of these, the latter is the most prized. Walking the streets, while all the world enjoys the siesta, wakeful señoras and señoritas are here and there seen behind the curtains that fall over the balconies, and which are supposed to shade the light from the eyes of the sleeper; and now and then some medium of