population. The Gallicians hew its wood and draw its water; the Asturian women nurse its babies at their deep bosoms, and fill the promenades with their brilliant costumes; the Valentians carpet its halls and quench its thirst with orgeat of chufas; in every street you shall see the red bonnet and sandalled feet of the Catalan; in every café, the shaven face and rat-tail chignon of the Majo of Andalusia. If it have no character of its own, it is a mirror where all the faces of the Peninsula may sometimes be seen. It is like the mockingbird of the West, that has no song of its own, and yet makes the woods ring with every note they have ever heard.
Though Madrid gives a picture in little of all Spain, it is not all Spanish. It has a large foreign population. Not only its immediate neighbors, the French, are here in great numbers,—conquering so far their repugnance to emigration, and living as gayly as possible in the midst of traditional hatred,—but there are also many Germans and English in business here, and a few stray Yankees have pitched their tents, to reinforce the teeth of the Dons, and to sell them ploughs and sewing-machines. Its railroads have waked it up to a new life, and the Revolution has set free the thought of its people to an extent which would have been hardly credible a few years ago. Its streets swarm with newsboys and strangers, the agencies that
