some
unknown species, struggled up into a pale, fragile existence, with stems
white in place of green, showing the absence of sunlight, so necessary
to both human and vegetable life. They had no fragrance, these stray
children from Flora's kingdom, but looked very much like forget-me-nots,
reminding one of the little flower which sprung up through the hard
pavement of Picciola's prison. Dilapidation is written everywhere in
this Oriental atmosphere. The Moors of Morocco still believe that they
will yet be restored to the Spanish home of their ancestors, and the
keys of these Toledo houses have been handed down from generation to
generation as emblems of their rights, tokens which were pointed out to
us at Tangier; but not, until we had visited Toledo, was the idea which
they involved fully appreciated. One cannot but realize a certain
respect for the Moors, while wandering among these scenes of the
long-buried past. Whatever may have been their failings, they must have
contrasted favorably with the present occupants, who seem strangely out
of place. In those ancient days the city contained a quarter of a
million of inhabitants; to-day it has barely fifteen thousand. The river
Tagus almost surrounds Toledo, and is not, like the Manzanares, merely a
dry ditch, but a full, rapid, rushing river.

The cathedral at Toledo is its most prominent object of interest, and
has a deservedly high fame; while clustering about it, in the very heart
of the old place, are many churches, convents, and palaces,--though a
large share of them are untenanted, and as silent as the tomb. But
before entering the cathedral we visited the Alcazar, formerly a royal
palace of Charles V., and now the West Point of Spain, where her sons
are educated for the army. Under the Moors, ten centuries ago, it was a
fortress, then a palace, now an academy, capable of accommodating six
hundred pupils. The view from the Alcazar, which dominates the entire
city, is vast and impressive, the building itself being also the first
object seen from a distance when one is approaching Toledo. It is upon a
bleak height. As you come out of the broad portals of the Alcazar
(Al-casa-zar, the czar's house), you walk to the edge of the precipitous
rock upon which it stands, and contemplate the view across the
far-reaching plain, gloomy and desolate, while at the base of the rock
rushes past the rapid Tagus. This whole valley, now so dead and silent,
once teemed with a dense po