Madrid, looked upon merely as the capital town of Spain, is extremely disappointing,[7] and simply a bad imitation of Paris, with little or nothing in it of original Spanish customs or life. The street architecture is modern, garish; it has a gingerbread appearance, and the use of whitewash has been too liberal. Although in the centre of Spain there are no remains of the Moorish or mediæval periods, nothing to represent the better class of art; and if you would find a bit of downright, dirty, picturesque Spanish street, you must penetrate to the back settlements, or the St. Giles's of Madrid--in fact, to the Calle de Toledo. There, beneath a blue sky, with squatting brown women suckling naked brown babies in the sun, gaudy churches, squalid houses, priests and beggars, not to speak of fish, vegetables, offal, and dogs, you may, after removing your handkerchief for one moment from your nose, imagine yourself amongst the slums of Naples. With the exception of some few women of the middle and lower classes, who pin black silk aprons on to the backs of modern _chignons_, and on Sunday, or at the bull-fight, perhaps a bit of old lace, none are seen wearing the graceful mantilla, or those dark robes with ample skirts that sweep the streets. The traveller has rarely an opportunity of observing in the capital that delicate and piquant flirting with the fan which we always associate with our ideas of Spanish ladies; but he may occasionally remark very bright and meaning glances directed to the opposite sex by eyes of dazzling lustre. To see the romance of old Spain, however, one must go down south to warm Seville and historic Granada, where, by the way, we do not intend to go, as everybody has been there before; and it has now become a matter of legitimate pride to be able to say: "Behold before you a man who has not been to the Alhambra!" The men in Madrid, although sometimes wrapped from heel to nose in the orthodox conspirator cloak, make themselves very eccentric in appearance by crowning their heads with that latest invention of the Evil One, the modern French chimney-hat; and that, too, in a very exaggerated form. The utter incongruity of these two articles of manly dress must be seen and felt to be thoroughly appreciated. To a tourist, indeed, who travels at a vast outlay of time and expense--to say nothing of cheerfully delivering up his body as a pasture-ground for innumerable fleas--in order to see Spain and the Spaniards as they ought to be, it really enters like iron into the soul (although, for the life of us, we could never understand that anatomical operation), to see Spain and Spaniards, in the matter of costume, at all events, as they are, and as they ought not to be.