"You will declare that other courts enjoy the same conveniences with less expense, because their magistrates are stricter to restrain the tradesman from establishing his prices at caprice. Truly, it may happen that elsewhere the price of foods and luxuries be less than in Madrid; yet it is certain that Madrid makes fair comparison in cheapness with the other cities of Castile. Nay, more, without there seeming to be cause, her courtiers daily find that by a marvel articles are cheaper here than in the soil which generated them, or in the town where they were wrought. The fact that in comparison with other kingdoms Madrid is in some ways the dearer, proves that she hath the money for rewarding labour; and that in other capitals the sweat of the artificer is worthless, because money is worth more. Always have I remarked that the province or the realm that is awarded the name of _happy_, because all things are purchasable there at next to no expense, is wrongly titled so, since here is evidence, either that money lacks, or that there is no purchaser."[79] [79] To further show the extravagant way of thinking and behaving of the Spaniard of the seventeenth century, the same author sets aside the sneering objection justly made by foreign writers to the river Manzanares at Madrid--namely, that it has no water--by remarking with exquisite complacency, that here precisely lies the crowning merit and advantage of the Manzanares over rival streams; in that it amuses people without endangering their lives. In the reigns of Philip the Fourth and Charles the Second, a favourite promenade of the Madrid aristocracy was the waterless channel of this river, in which, according to this work, "coaches and carriages do duty for a gondola, and form a pleasant imitation of the boats and palaces of Venice."