The streets of Toledo are exceedingly narrow; a person leaning out of a window on one side may shake hands with a person leaning out of a window on the other; and nothing would be more easy than to get over the balconies, if propriety was not preserved and aerial familiarities prevented by very handsome rails and charming iron bars, worked with that artistic richness of which they are so prodigal on the other side of the Pyrenees. This want of breadth would cause all the partisans of civilization among us to cry out in a frightful manner. These good people dream of nothing but immense places, vast squares, inordinately broad streets, and other embellishments more or less progressive. Nothing, however, can be more sensible than narrow streets in a very hot climate; and the architects who are making such large gaps in the buildings at Algiers will find this out very shortly. At the bottom of these narrow divisions so appropriately made between the blocks and masses of houses, you enjoy the most delicious shade and coolness: you walk about, completely protected, in the human polypier called a city; the spoonfuls of molten lead that Phœbus pours down from the sky at the hour of noon never fall upon you; the projecting roofs serve all the purposes of parasols. If, for your misfortune, you are obliged to traverse any _plazuela_ or _calle ancha_, exposed to the canicular sunbeams, you will soon appreciate the wisdom of people of former days, who were not accustomed to sacrifice everything to a notion of stupid regularity; the flagstones are as hot as the iron plates by means of which mountebanks make geese and turkeys dance the Cracovienne; the wretched dogs, who possess neither shoes nor _alpagartas_, gallop over these stones howling most piteously. If you raise the knocker of a door, it burns your fingers; you feel your brains boiling inside your skull like a saucepan full of water on the fire; your nose becomes the colour of a cardinal's hat; your hands are so sunburnt that you seem to have a pair of gloves on; and you evaporate in perspiration. Such is the advantage to be obtained by having spacious squares and broad streets. Every one who has walked along the _Calle d'Alcala_ at Madrid, between twelve and two o'clock in the day, will be of my opinion. Besides, in order to have broad streets, you are obliged to reduce the size of the houses, and the opposite process strikes me as being the more sensible one of the two. Of course, these observations only apply to warm countries, where it never rains, where mud is a chimera, and where carriages are extremely uncommon. Narrow streets in our showery climate would be nothing more or less than so many abominable sewers. In Spain, the women go out on foot in black satin shoes; and, shod in this manner, walk considerable distances; I admire them for this, especially at Toledo, where the pavement is formed of small polished stones, shining and pointed, and which