the exterior of the city
has an aspect of neglect and desertion. The interior, however, atones for
this in the gay and lively air of its streets, which, though narrow, are
regular and charmingly clean. The small plazas are neatness itself, and
one is too content with this to ask for striking architectural effects.
The houses are tall and stately, of the most dazzling whiteness, and
though you could point out no one as a pattern of style, the general
effect is chaste and harmonious. In fact, there are two or three streets
which you would almost pronounce faultless. The numbers of hanging
balconies and of court-yards paved with marble and surrounded with elegant
corridors, show the influence of Moorish taste. There is not a
mean-looking house to be seen, and I have no doubt that Cadiz is the best
built city of its size in the world. It lies, white as new-fallen snow,
like a cluster of ivory palaces, between sea and sky. Blue and silver are
its colors, and, as everybody knows, there can be no more charming
contrast.

I visited both the old and new cathedrals, neither of which is
particularly interesting. The latter is unfinished, and might have been a
fine edifice had the labor and money expended on its construction been
directed by taste. The interior, rich as it is in marbles and sculpture,
has a heavy, confused effect. The pillars dividing the nave from the
side-aisles are enormous composite masses, each one consisting of six
Corinthian columns, stuck around and against a central shaft. More
satisfactory to me was the Opera-House, which I visited in the evening,
and where the dazzling array of dark-eyed Gaditanas put a stop to
architectural criticism. The women of Cadiz are noted for their beauty and
their graceful gait. Some of them are very beautiful, it is true; but
beauty is not the rule among them. Their gait, however, is the most
graceful possible, because it is perfectly free and natural. The
commonest serving-maid who walks the streets of Cadiz would put to shame a
whole score of our mincing and wriggling belles.

Honest old Blanco prepared me a cup of chocolate by sunrise next morning,
and accompanied me down to the quay, to embark for Seville. A furious wind
was blowing from the south-east, and the large green waves raced and
chased one another incessantly over the surface of the bay. I took a heavy
craft, which the boatmen pushed along under cover of the pier, until they
reached the end, when the sail was dr