Given plenty of water, and Madrid is an ideal place for flowers. Such carnations as those which are grown in the nursery gardens there are never seen elsewhere--they are a revelation in horticulture; nor are the roses any less wonderful. The bouquet with which a Spaniard, whether _hidalgo_ or one of your servants, greets your birthday is generally a pyramid almost as tall as yourself. It needs to be placed in a large earthenware jar on the floor, and if you should be happy enough to have a good many friends, there is scarcely room for anything else in your _gabinete_. The flowers one can raise in a balcony in Madrid merely by using plenty of water, syringing the dust off the leaves, and shading them occasionally from the worst heat, are more than equal to anything a hothouse in England can produce. An idea may be formed of the really marvellous fertility of the soil and climate by the rapidity with which seeds develop. I remember one summer, when some of the new gardens were being laid out in the Buen Retiro, a grand concert and evening _fête_ was to be given as the opening function. On the evening before this entertainment was to take place we happened to be near, and strolled in to see how the preparations were going on. The gravel walks were all there, the stands for the bands, the Chinese lanterns hanging from the trees, but where was the grass? Alas! wherever it ought to have been were to be seen brown, sad-looking patches of bare earth, not a blade springing anywhere; what was worse, an army of gardeners were, at that moment only, sowing the seed in some patches, while others were being rolled, and watered with hose. _Cosa de España!_ of course. It had been put off to _mañana_, until now there might be _fête_, but no gardens. The following evening, when in company with all Madrid we went to the concert, behold a transformation! Soft, green, velvety sward--not to be walked on, it is true, but lovely to behold--covered the patches so absolutely bald twenty-four hours ago. The seed we had seen sown had sprung up as thickly as finest cut velvet. _Cosa de España_, indeed! It is not always in Spain--the land of the unexpected--that _Mañana verémos_ is foolishness.