Bristling castles, castle-like sierras exist everywhere in Spain. Why is just this portion called Castile? Look at Burgos, nestling in the bosom of a hill and green with springtime. The río Arlanzón has leaped from the savage Pico de Lara. But when it reaches Burgos, it is gentled: it is an idling pleasant little river. And the folk of Burgos have built along its banks an esplanade, a park of meticulous shrubs and gravel walks, a street of clubs and cafés where music, at nightfall, answers the tripping water and the wheatfields bending in breeze. The town goes up from a seven-sided Plaza. It is stone, but mellow. Its streets are criss-crossed with surprising squares, irregular in shape and level. Old houses bearing shields seem to stoop as if time-softened in the mounting swirl. The cathedral stands waist-high among roofs. Its grandiloquent splendor is town-bound. Only the loftiest windows catch the free heaven for the nave. The doors of the cathedral open on many levels. Far up in the transept is a golden window topping a stair of carven oak: and this window is a door upon a street. Burgos begins to terrace up less gently. Houses, streets, arched galleries over steps are all one stone: but everywhere the gray walls crack: lilacs bloom in every crevice. Windows are open: flowers wave in them. Black-gowned women make shadows. In the gutters which are clean, play children, warm like their mothers, lyric like the lilacs.... A running bloom in Burgos mounts with the streets until they match the steeples of the churches, until the harsh high churches are engulfed. A green hill dappled with cherry is the height of Burgos. And here is a castle. It is a famous Castle. It belonged to the first Counts of Castile, ere Castile was a kingdom. It witnessed the marriage of Ruy Díaz de Vivar, _el Cid_, to Ximena: and in its shadow stood the Cid’s _solar_, his “city dwelling.” It dominates the town. But it is ruin. It appears to have no importance. A paltry mass of rock it is, weeds in its cracks, gashes in its sides, and its top agape with earth and shrubs. It stands alone upon the top of the hill and crumbles into dust. Behind it are shanties: asses, dogs, hens possess the theater of its glory. The walls that once enclosed the city go down irrelevant now from the castle ruin: their cubos and bastions droop into a row of modern tenements, one spot of which is a tavern--a noisy mouth--filled with the red coats and red calls of soldiers. What is this castle in the life of Burgos? A disused memory. It stands above a town whose fluent smile is turned away from it. Surely, it is no symbol?