deserve a more patient study for their own sake, for their memories of old, and for the life of their narrow winding streets. The Spanish writer _Azorín_ (Martínez Ruiz), in a book of few pages,[83] conveys some wonderfully clear-cut impressions of Spain. He turns with preference to details of the centuries of Spain’s greatness, when Murcia, Valencia, and Seville were famous for their silks, Talavera for its earthenware, Toledo for its swords, when the gloves of Ocaña or the spurs of Ajofrín were unrivalled; or to the survival of old Spain in a picture, or a building, or a city. Thus he loves to wander through León with its spirit of ancient Spain and its classical street-names--here a cobbled grass-grown _plaza_ with pale acacias and ancient walls, the slow flight of doves and the wind rustling torn pieces of paper; there a quiet convent _patio_ with bays and rigid cypresses. For him the narrow streets of Córdoba have a deeper charm than those of any other Spanish city. He wanders through the labyrinth of intricate winding ways, with glimpses of small pillared _patios_ of flowers and fountains, and finds everywhere silence and a deep serene melancholy, restfulness, oblivion, and a harmony of soft shades, nowhere the light-hearted frivolity conventionally attributed to Andalucía. _Azorín’s_ originality consists in forcing a few apparently insignificant details to yield the whole spirit of a city, a country, a people. If he mentions the Mosque of Córdoba, it is but to note the beggars taking the sun in the _Patio de los Naranjos_, the sparrows twittering in the orange-trees, the sound of pitchers filling at the fountain. He gives us poignant descriptions of dead provincial cities and ruined ancestral houses. The decadence of Spain brought flourishing cities to low estate: Spain’s revival menaces them with a fresh ruin. Old narrow passages and intricate courts and sculptured houses make place for the introduction of tramways and broad asphalt streets. The old Santander described by Pereda survives only in his books, the old parts of Barcelona and Valencia are fast disappearing, and happy is the city such as Toledo whose position on abrupt rocks with no level spaces seems to promise an eternity of mediævalism and individuality. VII IN OLD CASTILLE It is with astonishment and a kind of fear that the traveller passes through the high-lying plains of Old Castille, journeying swiftly from city to city, to “Old towns whose history lies hid In monkish chronicle or rhyme, Burgos, the birthplace of the Cid, Zamora and Valladolid....”