The people you meet dressed in modern costumes, wearing broad-brimmed hats and long frock-coats, involuntarily produce on you a disagreeable effect, and appear more ridiculous than they really are; for, after all, they cannot be expected to walk about, for the sake of the local colouring, in the Moorish _albornoz_ of the time of Boabdil, or in the iron armour of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic. Like nearly all the citizens of every town in Spain, they think it necessary for their honour to show that they are not at all picturesque, and to prove, by the means of trousers and straps, their progress in civilization. Such is the prevailing idea which occupies their minds; they are afraid of appearing barbarous or backward; and when you admire the wild beauty of their country, they humbly beg you to excuse them for having no railways yet, and for being without steam-engines in their manufactories. One of these honest citizens, to whom I was extolling the charms of Granada, replied, "It is the best lighted city in Andalusia. Just look at the number of its lamps; but what a pity it is that they are not gas ones!" Granada is gay, smiling, animated, although much fallen from its former splendour. The inhabitants are everywhere, and well merit the name of a numerous population; the carriages are handsomer and more plentiful than at Madrid. The sprightliness of the Andalusians fills the streets with bustle and life--things unknown to the grave Castilian, who, as he goes along, makes no more noise than his shadow: this remark particularly applies to the Carrera del Darro, the Zacatin, the Plaza Nueva, the Calle de los Gomeles, which leads to the Alhambra, to the square before the theatre, to the entrances to the parade, and to all the leading thoroughfares. The rest of the city is intersected in all directions by inextricable lanes of three or four feet in width, through which no vehicles can pass, and which remind you of the Moorish streets of Algiers. The only sound heard there is the noise made by the hoof of a donkey or a mule, which strikes a light every now and then on the glittering flints which pave the road, or the monotonous tinkling of a guitar which some one is playing at the bottom of a yard.