At Burgos I found the _Gefe politico_, or governor of the province, sipping his lemonade in the evening at the _café_; his elbow brushing the back of a mayoral of a diligence, and surrounded by an assemblage of all classes of the male inhabitants of the town. These cafés are curious establishments; they are divided into two classes--the Café, properly so called, and the Botilleria--in which tea and coffee are not usually called for, but all the other refreshments of the café; such as _helados_ (frozen beverages of all sorts), _sorbetes_ (ices), liqueurs, wines, etc. These latter are the resort, in some towns, of both sexes, and indeed the cafés also in a less degree. But the etiquette in these things differs in the different provinces. At Madrid, where foreign customs first penetrate, ladies are rarely seen in these resorts; by which they are considerable losers. No doubt, were the attractions of French cafés sufficiently powerful, your sex would not have withered them, by their disdain, into the uncivilized dens which they are. You are not of course invited by the billiard tables, or by the allurements of black coffee and cognac; but were the waiters to set before you a tumbler of frozen lemonade after a July evening's dusty walk, you would speedily bring such habits into fashion. Much as the refreshments of Spanish cafés have been celebrated, their fame is surpassed by the reality. It is only when you have panted through a southern summer's day, and breathed an atmosphere of fire, that you are disposed to receive the illustration of the full sense of the word refreshment; and it is then they hand you a brobdignag goblet, brim full of frozen orange-water or lemonade, or snow-white orgeat--which, from the imperceptible inroads made by the teaspoon on its closing-up surface, appears likely to last you the whole night. These and other similar luxuries, including the ices, at which those of a Grange or Tortoni would melt with jealousy, are plentiful in second and third-rate towns, and rank among the necessaries of life, rather than as objects of indulgence. They are of course cheap, or it would not answer. The poor apply to the distributors of iced barley-water, who carry about a sort of cask, strapped between their shoulders, and containing ice in the centre, to maintain the frigidity of the beverage. By lowering and advancing the left shoulder, the vendor pours the contents of the cask through a small neck or pipe into the glasses, which he carries in a flat basket with cellaret partitions. A tumbler of this costs a halfpenny; its imbibing occupies two or three minutes, and assuages for hours the sufferings of the thirstiest palate.