We just now mentioned the adoption by the upper classes of the French style of dress; but the man of the people does not, luckily, study Parisian fashions. He has still kept the pointed hat with a velvet brim, adorned with silk tassels, or the one of stunted form with a wide flap, like a turban, the jacket ornamented at the elbows, the cuffs, and the collar, with embroidery, and pieces of cloth of all colours, and which vaguely reminds you of the Turkish jackets, the red or yellow sash, the breeches furnished with filigrane buttons, or with small coins soldered to a shank, with the leather gaiters open up the side to let the leg be seen; the whole being more striking, more gorgeous, more flowered, more dazzling, more loaded with tinsel and gewgaws, than the costume of any other province. You see also many other costumes known by the name of _vestido de cazador_ (hunter's dress), made of Cordova leather and blue or green velvet, and ornamented with aiglets. It is considered highly fashionable to carry a cane (vara) or white stick, four feet long, slit up at the end, and on which the person carrying it leans negligently when he stops to speak to any one. No _majo_ possessing the least respect for himself would ever dare appear in public without a _vara_. Two handkerchiefs, with their ends hanging out of the jacket pockets, a long _navaja_ stuck in the sash, not in front, but in the middle of the back, constitute the height of elegance for these coxcombs of the people. This costume so pleased my fancy, that my first care was to order one. They took me to Don Juan Zafata, a person who had a great reputation for national costumes, and who had as great a hatred for black dress-coats and frock-coats as I have. Seeing that my antipathy coincided with his own, he gave free course to his sorrow, and poured into my breast his elegies on the decline of art. With grief that found an echo in myself did he remind me of the happy time when foreigners dressed in the French fashion would have been hooted through the streets and pelted with orange-peel; when the _toreadores_ wore jackets embroidered with gold and silver, which were worth more than five hundred _piécettes_; and when the young men of good family had trimmings and aiglets of an enormous price. "Alas! sir, the English are the only persons who buy Spanish clothes now," said he, as he finished taking my measure.