Let us now go about the town as chance may lead us, for chance is the best guide, especially as Madrid is not rich in architectural beauties, and as one street is as remarkable as another. The first thing that you perceive on the angle of a house or street directly you raise your nose in the air, is a small porcelain plate with the following inscription--_Manzana. vicitac. gener._ These plates formerly served to number entire blocks or heaps of houses. At present each house is numbered separately, as in Paris. The quantity of plates that decorate the fronts of the houses and inform you that they are insured against fire, would excite your astonishment, especially in a country where there are no fireplaces and no fires. Everything is insured, including even the public monuments and churches. The civil war, it is said, is the cause of this great alacrity in insuring. As no one is certain of not being more or less fried alive by some Balmaseda or other, he endeavours to save at least his house. The houses of Madrid are built of lath and plaster, and bricks, save the jambs, the belting courses, and the straps, which are sometimes of grey or blue granite. The whole is rough-cast, and painted fantastically enough, sea-green, bluish ash-colour, fawn-colour, canary, and other hues more or less Anacreontic. The windows are surrounded by imitations of architectural ornaments of every description, with an infinite profusion of volutes, scroll-work, little loves and flower-pots. They have likewise large Venetian blinds with broad blue and white stripes, or spartum matting, which is sprinkled with water in order that it may render the wind cool and humid as it passes through. The modern houses are merely whitewashed, or coloured cream-colour like those in Paris. The balconies and _miradores_ jutting out from the walls, somewhat relieve the monotony of so many straight lines with their regular well-defined shadow, and diversify the naturally flat aspect of all these buildings, in which the portions that should be raised in relief are merely painted, as they would be on a scene in a theatre. Fancy all this lighted up with a blazing sun; at certain distances along these streets bathed in light, place a few long-veiled señoras spreading their fans out like parasols and holding them against their cheeks; a few bronzed and wrinkled beggars, clothed in scraps of cloth and rags as rotten as tinder; some few Valencians, half-naked and looking like Bedouins; imagine that you behold rising up between the housetops the small dwarf cupolas, and little bulging bell-turrets, terminated by leaden balls, and belonging to some church or convent, and the result will be rather a strange kind of scene, which will at least prove that you are no longer in the Rue Lafitte, and that you have decidedly left the Parisian asphalte for the time being, even if your feet, which are cut about by the pointed flint-stones of the pavement, had not already convinced you of the fact.