Jeres, like all the small towns of Andalusia, is whitewashed from head to foot, and has nothing remarkable in the way of buildings, save its _bodegas_, or wine warehouses, immense structures, with tiled roofs and long white walls devoid of windows. The gentleman to whom the letter was addressed was absent, but it produced its desired effect in spite of this circumstance, and we were immediately ushered into the cellars. Never was a more glorious spectacle presented to the gaze of a toper; we walked through alleys of casks, of four or five stories high. We were under the necessity of tasting every wine there, at least all the principal kinds, and there is an infinity of principal kinds. We ran through the whole gamut, from the sherry that was eighty-four years old, dark and thick, having the flavour of Muscat, and the strange colour of the green wine of Béziers, down to the dry, pale straw-coloured sherry, with a flavour of gun-flints, and a resemblance to Sauterne. Between these two extreme notes, there is a whole register of intermediate wines, with tints like burnt topazes or orange peel, and an extreme variety of taste. They are all, however, more or less mixed with brandy, especially those intended for England, where they would not otherwise be found strong enough, for, to please English throats, wine must be disguised as rum. After so complete a study of the Œnology of Jeres, the difficulty was to regain our carriage with a sufficiently upright and majestic bearing, so as not to compromise France in the eyes of Spain; it was a question of national pride; to fall or not to fall, that was the question on the present occasion, a question which was rather more embarrassing than that which so greatly perplexed the Prince of Denmark. I must say, however, with a degree of very legitimate self-approbation, that we walked to our calessin in a very satisfactory state of perpendicularity, and represented our well-beloved country with great glory in this struggle with the most heady wine of Spain. Thanks to the rapid evaporation produced by a heat of thirty-eight or forty degrees, on our return to Puerto, we were perfectly capable of discussing the most delicate points of psychology, and duly appreciating the various incidents of the bull-fight. Most of the bulls were _embalados_, that is to say, they had balls at the ends of their horns; two only were killed, but we were highly amused by a variety of burlesque episodes with which the proceedings were enlivened. The picadores, who were dressed like Turks at a masquerade, with Mameluke trousers of cambric muslin, and large suns on the back of their jackets, reminded us most forcibly of those outrageous Moors whom Goya represents with three or four strokes of the graver in his plates of the _Toromaquia_. One of these worthies, while waiting for his turn to attack the bull, blew his nose in the end of his turban with the most admirable philosophy and coolness. A _barco de