ent siesta truly luxurious and
refreshing.

One open staircase usually connects the upper and lower arcades;
admission is rarely given to the whole building at more than one point,
the great door, adjoining which is almost always to be found the
concierge, the janitor of the old Roman house, upon the model of which
the Spaniards probably founded their notion of a residence at once noble
and comfortable.

Little need be said concerning the particular house sketched. It is one
of the few left in Burgos to bear witness to the grandeur of its old
aristocracy. Though once the residence of the powerful Condes de Miranda
of the family of the Zunigas, it is now but a half ruined and entirely
dirty lodging-house for the lower classes in a poor and neglected part
of the city. A fine dedication to the most illustrious "Senor Don
Francisco de cuniga y Avellaneda, Conde de Miranda, Senor de la Villa
Daca, y de la Casa de Avellaneda, by Pedro Martinez the Printer of
Seville, in 1565," sets forth the arms as well as the style and title of
the nobleman by whom, or by whose next descendant the "Casa de Miranda"
of Burgos was probably built.

The present representative of this family is no other than the Conde de
Montijo, head of the house to which Her Majesty the Empress of the
French belongs. The remarkable "Casa solar" of Penaranda de Duero,
within an easy excursion from Burgos, once a magnificent villa of the
Zunigas, was one of the hereditary possessions of her sister the Duchess
of Alba.

There are some few other old houses remaining in Burgos, the most
remarkable, for oddity rather than beauty, being the "Casa del Cordon;"
so called from its facade, which exhibits a gigantic rope representing
the "Cordon" of the Teutonic order, encircling and uniting, the arms of
the Velascos, Mendozas, and Figueras with those of Royalty. It was
erected by a Count Haro, Constable of Castile, at the end of the
fifteenth century. It is now the residence of the Capitan General of the
Province, and the property of the Duca de Frias, a descendant of Count
Haro.

The Casa de Miranda is to be found in Burgos, in the "Calle de la
Calera," not far from the "Barrio de la Vega." No English visitor to
Burgos should omit to see the Convent of las Huelgas, most interesting
not only as founded by an English Princess, (Leonora, daughter of Henry
II, married to Alfonso VIII), in 1180; but as evidencing in its design,
which is exceptionally grave, simple, an