Let us linger for awhile with Cervantes in the great square and broad streets of Valladolid. To-day, Valladolid, “the Rich,” is a fallen city. Here still stand the old Royal Palace, upon which Cervantes’ eyes must so often have rested--a ruin. The great Cathedral, an imposing mass of granite, which was begun in 1585, is still unfinished. Here still stand the house in the Calle de Colon, in which Columbus died; and Cervantes’ own lodging at No. 14, Calle de Rastro; and the huge Plaza Major where, on October 7th, 1559, Philip II. celebrated the first memorable Auto de Fé, and which was, in Cervantes’ day, the meeting place of all the poets and soldiers, the historians and savants, who haunted the Court of His Most Religious Majesty. Here Cervantes remained while his work circulated throughout the country, and overflowed into every country in Europe. Would you know the social conditions that prevailed in Spain in the latter half of the sixteenth century? You can obtain the information in “_The Life and Achievement of Don Quixote de la Mancha_.” If you would have wit and wisdom, or if you would take humanity to be your study, you have only to turn to this same work. If you seek to realise the condition under which a man bore arms, or wielded a pen, under that royal barbarian, Philip II., you must have resource to this history. Would you understand Cervantes’ own experience in arms and in letters? Turn to Chapter xxxi. of the First Part of _Don Quixote_. What higher ideal ever had any man, both for the soldier and the writer? Listen to the Don in what Cervantes assures his readers is his hero’s most rational and logical humour: “Now the end and design of letters,” he says, “is to regulate distributive justice, and give to every man his due; to institute good laws, and cause [Illustration] them to be strictly observed; an end most certainly generous and exalted, and worthy of high commendation; but not equal to that which is annexed to the profession of arms, the object and end of which is peace, the greatest blessing mortals can wish for in this wearisome life.” The purpose of letters has never been placed on a higher standard, and militarism is robbed of its sordidness in his definition of its aims. Cervantes was a soldier and an author by trade, let us listen to his verdict when, granting that the end of war is peace, and that in this it has the advantage of the end proposed by letters, he weighs the labours of the scholar against those of the warrior, and decides on which side the balance turns.