_À propos_ of the general wonder expressed at any one wishing for cold water to wash in, there seems in Spain to be an equal terror of fresh air. Upon one occasion we had been in bed but a short time when a waiter entered the room to inquire if Señor had all he required. His eyes had no sooner rested upon the open window, which admitted the clear night air, than his whole countenance became locked and rigid, as if some dreadful personage--the travelling prophet of Khorassan, it might be--had suddenly presented himself at the window. The functionary in question, however, soon recovered his presence of mind, and having cast one anxious glance at our bed, to satisfy himself that all was right with us, he flew across the room with a bound and an oath, slammed the casements together, and the shutters after them, flinging the cross bar into its socket with such force as to show that he intended it to remain there. The hotels in Spain, in the larger towns, are generally clean and well kept; though some persons, perhaps, might be able to dispense with a little of that universal odour of onions and ammonia which constantly prevails throughout the house; and the goods and chattels of travellers in the various rooms would not be absolutely endangered if common beggars from the streets were prevailed upon not to spend quite so much of their time on the stairs between the bed-chambers and the ground-floor. Valladolid being a town of considerable importance in the history of Spain, we were eager to see it, and were soon threading our way through the sunny streets, underneath the broad band of blue overhead, until we found ourselves face to face with the Colegio Mayor de Santa Cruz, a grand old palace founded by Cardinal Mendoza in 1479, and now standing with all its beautiful fretwork clogged with wild weeds, and its light arcades, Saracenic columns, and Gothic porches mouldering away in sun and silence. On we wandered, through the long galleries, till we reached the library, apparently so called on account of the total absence of books, but which is filled with a mine of wealth in the shape of a profusion of specimens of the most exquisite carvings in walnut wood and dark oak. There are _salas_ after _salas_ filled with old musty pictures, carvings, and wooden sculptures, collected from the various convents at the period of their suppression. The pictures are mostly bad, though many of them are curious. Of course there are numbers of hoary old saints in rags, with gold quoits fixed on to the backs of their heads, glorifying in the lying label placed beneath them. A long room is filled with fearful painted figures carved in wood, representing troops of gigantic ruffians in the act of persecuting Christ, more grotesquely hideous than anything we could imagine in our worst dreams. Is it in order to inspire a due reverence and affection for Our Saviour that the figure of the Redeemer is represented in these productions as a meagre, wan, and emaciated