Castilian Days | Page 2

moored at Madrid through all
succeeding years.
It was a dreary and somewhat shabby court for many reigns. The great
kings who started the Austrian dynasty were too busy in their world
conquest to pay much attention to beautifying Madrid, and their weak
successors, sunk in ignoble pleasures, had not energy enough to indulge
the royal folly of building. When the Bourbons came down from
France there was a little flurry of construction under Philip V., but he
never finished his palace in the Plaza del Oriente, and was soon
absorbed in constructing his castle in cloud-land on the heights of La
Granja. The only real ruler the Bourbons ever gave to Spain was
Charles III., and to him Madrid owes all that it has of architecture and
civic improvement. Seconded by his able and liberal minister, Count
Aranda, who was educated abroad, and so free from the trammels of
Spanish ignorance and superstition, he rapidly changed the ignoble
town into something like a city. The greater portion of the public
buildings date from this active and beneficent reign. It was he who laid
out the walks and promenades which give to Madrid almost its only
outward attraction. The Picture Gallery, which is the shrine of all
pilgrims of taste, was built by him for a Museum of Natural Science. In
nearly all that a stranger cares to see, Madrid is not an older city than
Boston.
There is consequently no glory of tradition here. There are no
cathedrals. There are no ruins. There is none of that mysterious and
haunting memory that peoples the air with spectres in quiet towns like
Ravenna and Nuremberg. And there is little of that vast movement of
humanity that possesses and bewilders you in San Francisco and New
York. Madrid is larger than Chicago; but Chicago is a great city and
Madrid a great village. The pulsations of life in the two places resemble
each other no more than the beating of Dexter's heart on the
home-stretch is like the rising and falling of an oozy tide in a marshy
inlet.
There is nothing indigenous in Madrid. There is no marked local color.

It is a city of Castile, but not a Castilian city, like Toledo, which girds
its graceful waist with the golden Tagus, or like Segovia, fastened to its
rock in hopeless shipwreck.
But it is not for this reason destitute of an interest of its own. By reason
of its exceptional history and character it is the best point in Spain to
study Spanish life. It has no distinctive traits itself, but it is a patchwork
of all Spain. Every province of the Peninsula sends a contingent to its
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 cafe, 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 it has
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 are to bring its people into the movement
of the age.
It has a superb opera-house, which might as well be in Naples, for all
the national character it has; the court theatre, where not a word of
Cas-tilian is ever heard, nor a strain of Spanish music. Even
cosmopolite Paris has her grand opera sung in French, and easy-going
Vienna insists that Don Juan shall make love in German. The
champagny strains of Offenbach are heard in every town of Spain
oftener than the ballads of the country. In Madrid there are more
pilluelos who whistle _Bu qui s'avance_ than the Hymn of