Among the principal newspapers, in a crowd of less important ones, _La Época_, Conservative and dynastic ranks first; this is the journal of the aristocrats, of the "upper ten thousand," or those who aspire to be so, and it ranks as the _doyen_ of the whole Press. Its circulation is not so large as that of some of the other papers, but its clientèle is supposed to be of the best. _El Nacional_ is also Conservative, but belonging to the party of Romero Robledo. What the exact politics of that variation of Conservatism might be, it is difficult, I might almost say impossible, for a stranger to say. If you were told nothing about it, and took it up accidentally to read of current events, you would certainly suppose it to be independent, with a decidedly Liberal tendency. Still it calls itself Conservative. _El Correo_ is Liberal, of the special type of Sagasta, the present Prime Minister. _El Español_, which also gives one the impression of independence, is Liberal after the manner of Gemaro. _El Heraldo_, calling itself _Diario Independente_, is credited with being the Liberal organ of Canalijas. _El Liberal_ and _El Pais_ are Republican, and _El Correo Español_ is Carlist, or clerical. This paper appears to be looked upon a good deal in the nature of a joke by its colleagues, and quotations from it are always accompanied by notes of exclamation. _La Correspondéncia de España_ is a paper all by itself, an invention of Spanish journalism, and its unprecedented success is due to many of its quite unique peculiarities. Its originator, now a millionaire, is proud of relating that he arrived in Madrid with two dollars in his pocket. He it was who conceived the brilliant idea of founding a journal which should be the special organ of all. "_Diario politico independiente, y de noticias: Eco imparcial de la opinion y de la prensa_," he calls it, and the fourth page, devoted to advertisements, would make the fortune of ten others. His boast was that it had no editor, paid no writers, and employed no correspondents. It simply possessed a certain number of "caterers" for news, who thrust themselves everywhere, picking up morsels of news--good, bad, and indifferent, for the most part scribbled in pencil and thrown into a receptacle from which they are drawn in any order, or none, and handed to the printer as "copy"; coming out in short, detached paragraphs of uneven length, ranging from three lines to twenty. Extracts from foreign newspapers, official news, provincial reports, money matters, religious announcements, accidents, everything comes out pell-mell--absolutely all "the voices of the flying day," in Madrid and everywhere else, in one jumble, without order or sequence, one paragraph frequently being a direct contradiction to another in the same sheet. There are three editions during the day, but the "Night-cap," which sums up them all, appears about ten o'clock or later, and it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that it is bought by almost