Since the days of Cervantes, the aspect of the city and the manners and customs of its inhabitants have not undergone any profound change. The monumental buildings remain, and the cry of the watchman and the notes of the guitar are still heard by night in the tortuous alleys, and under the palm trees of the _plazas_. The careless, merry Sevillanos continue to love the dance, the song, the bull fight and the theatre more than science and literature. We may see the types sketched by the great satirist in _The Jealous Estremaduran_, if we will but enter one of the fashionable _cafés_ during the evening. It would be unfair to say that Sevillian society is composed entirely of adventurers, but they are a distinctive class in the pleasure-loving capital. 'In the city of Seville,' writes Cervantes, 'is a class of idling, lazy people who locally go by the common name of "the children of the ward"; they are considered as foragers on the public; they are the sons of rich parents, not of the nobility; always well-dressed, fond of pleasure, extravagant and expensive, plunging themselves and their parents in debt; always feasting and revelling; every way bringing discredit on society, defrauding and injuring their creditors.' The stranger will not be in the city many hours before he notices a curious device on public buildings, official uniforms and elsewhere. This is the node, or knot (_el nodo_), which forms a part of the coat-of-arms of Seville. The knot is in the centre of an ornamental circle, and on one side of it are the letters NO and on the other DO. This legend in full is _No madeja do_, or, _No me ha dejado_, which means: 'It has not deserted me.' The symbol of the _nodo_ was adopted after the fealty of the _muy leal_ city to Alfonzo X. [Illustration: Arms of Seville] CHAPTER XIV _The Alma Mater of Bull-fighters_ 'The Arabs were much given to bull-fighting, and highly skilled in the _lidia_, whether mounted or on foot.'--SANCHEZ DE NIEVA, _El Toréo_. Seville is so renowned in the annals of the great Spanish sport of bull-fighting, that I propose to devote a chapter to a brief history and description of the 'science of tauromachia,' or the recreation of the _lidia_. Mr. Leonard Williams, in _The Land of the Dons_, is somewhat apologetic to his readers for introducing three chapters upon the bullfight and its history; but such is the enthusiasm exhibited for the pastime, that Mr. Williams states that thirty chapters, instead of three, would scarcely be disproportionate to the importance in which the _corrida_ is esteemed by the Spanish nation. While making personal confession that I am not an _aficionado_, or enthusiast, of the art of bull-fighting, I will endeavour to convey to the reader a conception of the influence of the sport upon the Andalusian public, from which the moralist and sociologist may draw their conclusions.