The description of the Museum at Madrid would require a whole volume. It is rich in the extreme, and contains a very large number of the works of Titian, Raphael, Paolo Veronese, Rubens, Velasquez, Ribeira, and Murillo. The pictures are hung in an excellent light, and the architectural style of the building is tolerably good, especially in the interior. The Façade looks on the Prado, and is a specimen of bad taste, but taken altogether the building does honour to the architect, Villa Nueva, who drew the plans. After the Museum, the next place to be visited is the Cabinet of Natural History, containing the mastodon, or _dinotherium giganteum_, a marvellous specimen of the fossil world, with bones like bars of iron. It must at least be the behemoth mentioned in the Bible. The collection also contains a lump of virgin gold weighing sixteen pounds, a number of Chinese gongs, the sound of which, in spite of what people say, very much resembles that which is produced if you kick a copper, and a succession of pictures representing all the possible varieties which can be produced by crossing white, black, and copper-coloured races. I must not forget in the academy three admirable pictures by Murillo,--namely, the Foundation of Santa Maria Mayora (two pictures), and Saint Elizabeth washing the heads of persons afflicted with scurvy; two or three admirable Ribeiras; a Burial, by _El Greco_, some portions of which are worthy of Titian; a fantastic sketch by the same artist, representing monks performing different acts of penance, and surpassing the most mysterious and gloomy creations of Lewis or Anne Radcliffe; and a charming woman in Spanish costume, lying on a divan, by the good old Goya, that pre-eminently national painter, who seems to have come into the world expressly to collect the last vestiges of the ancient manners and customs of his country, which were about to disappear for ever. Francisco Goya y Lucientes, was the last who could be recognised as a descendant of Velasquez. After him come Aparicio, Lopez, and others of the same stamp. The decadence of art is complete: the cyclus is closed! Who shall ever recommence it? Goya is, indeed, a strange painter--a most singular genius! Never was originality more decided--never was a Spanish painter more local. One of Goya's sketches, consisting of four touches of his graver in a cloud of aquatint, tells you more about the manners of the country than the longest description. From his adventurous kind of life, his impetuosity, and his manifold talents, Goya seems to belong to the best period of the art; and yet he was in some sort a contemporary, having died at Bordeaux in 1828.