{218} This is, I think, a good English word. The Spanish form would be _desesperados_. {220} King of the gypsies in Triana. {221} Isidore Justin Severin, Baron Taylor, was born at Brussels in 1789. His father was an Englishman, and his mother half Irish, half Flemish. Isidore was naturalized as a Frenchman, and after serious studies and artistic travels throughout Europe, he returned to France on the Restoration with a commission in the Royal Guard. His _Bertram_, written in collaboration with Charles Nodier, had a great success on the Paris stage in 1821. In 1823 he accompanied the French army to Spain, and on his return was made Commissaire Royal du Théâtre Français, in which capacity he authorized the production of _Hernani_ and the _Mariage de Figaro_. In 1833 he arranged for the transport of the two obelisks from Luxor to Paris, and in 1835 he was commissioned by Louis Philippe with an artistic mission to Spain to purchase pictures for the Louvre, and on his return, having transferred the Standish collection of paintings from London to Paris, he was named Inspecteur-Général des beaux arts in 1838. He died in 1879. {223} _Alcalá de Guadaira_; Arabic, _Al-Kal’ah_, the fort, or castle. A name necessarily often repeated in Spain, where the Goths, who are so proudly remembered, have left so few records of their three hundred years’ dominion in the place-names of the Peninsula, and where the Arab, at all times detested, is yet remembered in the modern names of wellnigh every town, river, and headland in Southern Spain, and in many places throughout the entire Peninsula. The most celebrated of all these castles is, of course, _Alcalá de Henares_, the birthplace of Cervantes, the seat of the great university of Ximenes. This _Alcalá_ is known as that of Guadaira, _i.e._ the river of Aira, the Arabic _Wady al Aira_. The town at the present day, though small, is a very important place, with some eight thousand inhabitants, and over two hundred flour-mills, and is known as the “oven of Seville,” _El horno de Sevilla_. Carmona—the Roman Carmo and Arab Karmanah—with double the population, was the last stronghold of Peter the Cruel, and is full of historic associations. {226} Madoz, in his _Diccionario Geografico-estadistico_, published in 1846, half a dozen years after the date of Borrow’s visit, says nothing under _Carolina_, _Carlota_, or _Luisiana_ of this supposed German colonization. Yet Carolina and eighty-four neighbouring villages form a most interesting district, known as the _Nuevas poblaciones de Sierra Morena_, especially exempted from taxation and conscription on their foundation or incorporation by Olavides, the Minister of Charles III., in 1768. It is possible that some German colonists were introduced at that time. Among the eighty-five _pueblos_ constituting this strange district is the historic _Navas de Tolosa_, where the Moors were so gloriously defeated in 1212. {230} Wellington.