CASTILIAN DAYS
MADRID AL FRESCO.
Madrid is a capital with a malice afterthought. Usually the seat of government is established in some important town from the force of circumstances. Some cities have an attraction too powerful for the Court to resist. There is no capital of England possible but London. Paris is the heart of France. Rome is the predestined capital of Italy in spite of the wandering flirtations its varying governments in different centuries have carried on with Ravenna, or Naples, or Florence. You can imagine no Residenz for Austria but the Kaiserstadt,—the gemüthlich Wien. But there are other capitals where men have arranged things and consequently bungled them. The great Czar Peter slapped his Imperial Court down on the marshy shore of the Neva, where he could look westward into civilization and watch with the jealous eye of an intelligent barbarian the doings of his betters. Washington is another specimen of the cold-blooded handiwork of the capital builders. We shall think nothing
