Wherever he spent this interval his brain had not been idle--he had passed in review the defects of the Spanish government and of the Spanish character. He had been unable to rouse the king to crush the power of the Algerine pirates, either by the memorials he had consigned to his friend the secretary, or by the vigorous pictures he had presented on the stage (after his return from captivity) of the cruelties inflicted by them on their unhappy captives. He had failed in his great and cherished object, but there remained one reformation yet to be made, namely, of taste among those Spaniards, ladies and gentlemen, to whom reading was a pleasure, and who could afford to purchase books. To substitute a relish for healthier studies was a darling object of our much worried poet for years. It was cherished in prisons, and the first part of his great work written, or nearly so, at the time when we find him again mixing with society in Valladolid, where Philip II. held his court. This was in the year 1603. The following extract concerning his residence and his mode of life in that city, is taken from the work of M. Chasles: "There is at Valladolid a poor looking house, narrow and low, hemmed in among the taverns of a suburb, and near the deep and empty bed of a torrent called Esguéva. There Cervantes came to live in 1603, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. With an emotion which I cannot express I hare visited this dwelling, which stands outside the city, and which remains unmarked by stone or inscription. A well-used staircase conducts to the two modest chambers used by Cervantes. One, in which he slept, no doubt, is a square room with a low ceiling supported by beams. The other, a sort of ill-lighted kitchen looking on to the neighboring roofs, still holds his _cantarelo_ or stone with three round hollows to hold water jars. Here lived with him his wife, Dona Catalina, his daughter Isabelle, now twenty years old, his sister Dona Andrea, his niece Constanza, and a relation named Dona Magdalena. A housekeeper increased the family. Where did all sleep? However that was arranged, they all did their work together. The ladies earned money by embroidering the court-dresses. Valladolid, adopted for abode by the new king and by the Duke of Lerma, was then incumbered, as was Versailles afterwards, with gentlemen, with the grandees, and with generals. Our impoverished family was supported by this affluence. The Marquis of Villafranca, returning from Algiers to the court, got his gala-suit made by the family of the soldier-poet, with whom he had erewhile been acquainted. Cervantes was occupied either with keeping the books of people in business, or regulating the accounts of some people of quality, or striving to bring his long lawsuit with the government lo a close.