I may here mention some fountains of a very corrupt _rococo_ style, but very amusing; the bridge of Toledo, a specimen of bad taste, very rich and highly ornamented with ovalos and chicory leaves, and a few strangely-variegated churches surmounted by Muscovite turrets. We will now direct our steps towards the Buen Retiro, a royal residence situated at the distance of a few paces from the Prado. We Frenchmen, who possess Versailles and Saint Cloud, and could formerly boast of Marly, are difficult to please in the matter of royal residences. The Buen Retiro strikes us as being the realization of the dreams of some well-to-do tallowchandler. It is a garden filled with the most ordinary but glaring flowers, and little basins ornamented with vermicular rustic rock-work, and small fountains like those we see in certain fishmongers' shops. It also contains pieces of green water, on which swim wooden swans painted white and varnished, besides an infinity of other marvels of a very ordinary description. The natives fall into ecstasies before a certain rustic pavilion built of small round blocks, the interior of which has rather strong claims to being considered Hindoo in style. The first _Jardin Turc_ at Paris, the primitive and patriarchal _Jardin Turc_, with its kiosks and windows filled with small coloured panes, through which you saw a blue, green, or red landscape, was far superior both in taste and magnificence. There is also a certain Swiss cottage, which is the most ridiculous and absurd affair it is possible to imagine. At the side of this cottage is a stable, furnished with a goat and a kid both stuffed, and also with a sow of grey stone, suckling a litter of young pigs of the same material. A few paces from the cottage the guide suddenly leaves you, and opens the door in a mysterious manner. When, at last, he calls you and gives you leave to enter, you hear low rumbling of wheels and balance-weights, and find yourself in the presence of a number of frightful automatons, who are churning, spinning, or rocking, with their wooden feet, children equally wooden, and sleeping in carved cradles: in the next room is the grandfather ill in bed, while his medicine is standing on a table beside him. Such is a very accurate summary of the principal wonders of the Buen Retiro. A fine equestrian statue in bronze of Philip V., the pose of which resembles that of the statue of Louis XIV. in the Place des Victoires at Paris, makes up in some degree for all these absurdities. [Illustration: MADRID.]