e design of
late cinque-cento style. Indeed, the very form and fluting of the
corselets, brasses, vambrasses, and cuisses, would indicate that armour
of a date posterior to the middle of the sixteenth century had been
adopted as types for the making up of the trophies.

[Illustration: PLATE 24

AVILA

CASA POLENTINA

MDW 1869]

PLATE XXIV.

_AVILA_.

THE PATIO OF THE CASA POLENTINA.

NEXT to the general feeling of interest excited by the picturesque
aspect of decayed architectural grandeur, which is presented by the
remains of this dilapidated Patio, rises a feeling of curiosity as to
the mode and manner of life of those whose wants such costly building
subserved. Privacy and coolness appear to have been the chief
desiderata, and those architectural ornaments seem to have been
preferred, which recall, at almost every step, the hereditary dignities
of the family tree. Madame d'Aulnois, whose Letters from Spain, written
in 1679,[13] give the liveliest possible picture of life in those days
in the Peninsula, gratifies our curiosity in the most agreeable manner,
and with that quickness of perception, as to domestic habits, by means
of which, none but a woman can seize at a glance, the telling details
essential to give completeness and reality to a sketch. Speaking of the
Spaniards of the upper and middle classes of the seventeenth century she
says:--"All their houses have a great many rooms on a floor; you go
through a dozen or fifteen parlours, or chambers, one after another.
Those which are the worst lodged have six or seven. The rooms are
generally longer than they are broad. The floors and ceilings are
neither painted nor gilt; they are made of plaister quite plain, but so
white that they dazzle one's eyes; for every year they are scraped, and
whited as the walls, which look like marble, they are so well polished.
The Court to their summer apartments is made of certain matter, which,
after it has ten pails of water thrown upon it, yet is dry in
half-an-hour, and leaves a pleasant coolness; so that in the morning
they water all, and a little while after they spread mats or carpets
made of fine rushes, which cover all the pavement. The whole apartments
are hung with the same small mat about the depth of an ell, to hinder
the coolness of the walls from hurting those which lean against them. On
the top of these mats there are hung pictures and looking-glasses. The
cushions, which are of gold and silver b