As the populace like to enjoy things from the very commencement, the stir of Corpus Christ! began in Granada on the preceding evening. Before dark the gates of the city were thronged with the picturesque peasantry from the mountain villages, and the brown laborers from the Vega, or vast fertile plain. As the evening advanced, the Vivarambla thickened and swarmed with a motley multitude. This is the great square in the center of the city, famous for tilts and tourneys during the times of Moorish domination, and incessantly mentioned in all the old Moorish ballads of love and chivalry. For several days the hammer had resounded throughout this square. A gallery of wood had been erected all round it, forming a covered way for the grand procession of Corpus Christi. On this eve of the ceremonial this gallery was a fashionable promenade. It was brilliantly illuminated, bands of music were stationed in balconies on the four sides of the square, and all the fashion and beauty of Granada, and all its population that could boast a little finery of apparel, together with the majos and majas, the beaux and belles of the villages, in their gay Andalusian costumes, thronged this covered walk, anxious to see and to be seen. As to the sturdy peasantry of the Vega, and such of the mountaineers as did not pretend to display, but were content with hearty enjoyment, they swarmed in the center of the square; some in groups listening to the guitar and the traditional ballad; some dancing their favorite bolero; some seated on the ground making a merry though frugal supper; and some stretched out for their night's repose. The gay crowd of the gallery dispersed gradually toward midnight; but the center of the square resembled the bivouac of an army; for hundreds of the peasantry, men, women, and children, passed the night there, sleeping soundly on the bare earth, under the open canopy of heaven. A summer's night requires no shelter in this genial climate; and with a great part of the hardy peasantry of Spain a bed is a superfluity which many of them never enjoy, and which they affect to despise. The common Spaniard spreads out his manta, or mule-cloth, or wraps himself in his cloak, and lies on the ground, with his saddle for a pillow.