reply sums up the whole history of Spain at the present moment, and furnishes us with a key to very many things which to us in France appear incomprehensible. The fact is, that an inhabitant of New Castile cares no more for anything that happens in Old Castile, than for what occurs in the moon. As forming one great whole, Spain does not yet exist; it is still the kingdoms of Spain, Castile and Leon, Aragon and Navarre, Granada and Murcia, &c.; it is composed of a number of different races, speaking different dialects, and hating one another most cordially. Being a simple-minded foreigner, I spoke warmly against such a refinement of cruelty, but my attention was called to the fact that the curé was a constitutional curé, which considerably extenuated the matter. Espartero's victories, which appear to us, who have been accustomed to the colossal victories under the Empire, rather mediocre, frequently serve as a text for the politicians of the _Puerta del Sol_. After one of these triumphs, in which two men have been killed, three made prisoners, and a mule seized carrying one sabre and a dozen cartridges, the town is illuminated, and a distribution of oranges and cigars made to the army, producing a degree of enthusiasm easily described. Formerly, and even at present, the nobles used to go into the shops near the _Puerta del Sol_, and, ordering a chair to be brought, stop there for a good part of the day, conversing with the customers, to the great annoyance of the shopkeeper, who was afflicted with such a proof of familiarity. Let us enter, if you please, the Post-office, to see whether there are no letters from France. This hankering after letters is an actual disease. You may be sure that the first public building a traveller visits when he arrives in any city, is the Post-office. At Madrid, every letter addressed _poste restante_ is numbered, and the number and name of the person to whom the letter is sent are posted upon a certain pillar. There is a pillar for January, another for February, and so on. You look for your name, observe the number, and go and ask for your letter at the office, where it is delivered up to you without any further formality. At the expiration of a year, if the letters are not fetched away, they are burnt. Under the galleries surrounding the courtyard of the Post-office, and shaded by large spartum blinds, are established all kinds of reading-rooms, like those under the galleries of the Odéon, at Paris, where you go to see the Spanish and foreign papers. The postage is not dear, and, despite the innumerable dangers to which the couriers are exposed on the road, which is almost invariably infested by insurgents and bandits, the service is conducted as regularly as possible. It is on these pillars, too, that poor students post notices to the effect that they are willing to black the boots of some rich cavalier, in order to procure the means of attending their lectures of rhetoric or philosophy.