Entering the city by the striking bridge of San Martin, you pass the picturesque ruin of the _Baño de la Cava_, where the too charming Florinda is supposed to have bathed for the doom of Don Rodrigo and the ruin of Gothic Spain. Rodrigo's castle, of which not a trace now remains, was built on the high rock above, and indiscreet eyeshot sent down upon this sacred spot is said to have revealed to him a seductive vision of a beautiful bare limb. The ruin is probably that of a towered bridge, suggested by the big grey stone on the opposite bank. The spot is, however, romantic enough for any legend, and those who prefer tradition to fact will say, if Florinda did not bathe there, she ought to have done so. The view on this side is more beautiful than even on the other. A Spanish friend, whose privilege it is to paint Toledo in all her wild and sad enchantment, in a big house above the Puerta del Cambron, overlooking the wavy water-line from the bridge of San Martin and the exquisite diversity of orchard and meadow-land, has offered me many delightful moments of contemplation of this unique view from his broad terrace. It combines in the rarest form a light and smiling charm with a superb and matchless melancholy. From this point of entrance you twist up and down through the most mysterious streets of the world. Who designed them, who fashioned them? How came any town to be so built? Streets so narrow that hand may touch hand from either side, and soft converse be held through opposite windows; so rounded that an enemy advancing might fall upon you unperceived. How many lovely façades, alas! eaten away, a sullen magnificent protest against modern times, with divine arches showing here and there through miserable plaster! Everywhere Moorish faience, and curious Toledan doors in Arabian or Gothic porches, for all the world like the doors of palaces in fairyland, ornamented with huge carved iron nails. And when the doors stand open, glimpses of bright clean patios, with their gleaming bands of _azulejos_, their centre well and little stunted trees. All so dull, so still, so silent. Now and then you may chance to meet a woman following a mule laden with fruit and vegetable, which she sells from house to house, or a water-carrier, or an itinerant pedlar shouting the value and nature of his wares up to the balconies. Some of the street effects of grouping and colouring are of an indescribable witchery. Where will you match such a corner as that of the old palace of the Cardinal D. Pascual de Aragon, now a convent? Words are useless to convey an idea of its quaintness, the effect of pink and green, of iron balcony, of wrought stone, of broken façade and charming variety of line. These are things that even a painter can hardly hope to reproduce. And such corners abound in Toledo. The foot treads the very pavement of romance and legend, where everything is a gratification for the eye, and the dream of the mourner of departed centuries is remorselessly