dly through the country. And the whole land laughed with the
joy of living.

But I love also the recollection of Seville in the grey days of
December, when the falling rain offered a grateful contrast to the
unvarying sunshine. Then new sights delighted the eye, new perfumes the
nostril. In the decay of that long southern autumn a more sombre
opulence was added to the gay colours; a different spirit filled the
air, so that I realised suddenly that old romantic Spain of Ferdinand
and Isabella. It lay a-dying still, gorgeous in corruption, sober yet
flamboyant, rich and poverty-stricken, squalid, magnificent. The white
streets, the dripping trees, the clouds gravid with rain, gave to all
things an adorable melancholy, a sad, poetic charm. Looking back, I
cannot dismiss the suspicion that my passionate emotions were somewhat
ridiculous, but at twenty-three one can afford to lack a sense of
humour.

* * *

But Seville at first is full of disillusion. It has offered abundant
material to the idealist who, as might be expected, has drawn of it a
picture which is at once common and pretentious. Your idealist can see
no beauty in sober fact, but must array it in all the theatrical
properties of a vulgar imagination; he must give to things more imposing
proportions, he colours gaudily; Nature for him is ever posturing in the
full glare of footlights. Really he stands on no higher level than the
housemaid who sees in every woman a duchess in black velvet, an Aubrey
Plantagenet in plain John Smith. So I, in common with many another
traveller, expected to find in the Guadalquivir a river of transparent
green, with orange-groves along its banks, where wandered ox-eyed youths
and maidens beautiful. Palm-trees, I thought, rose towards heaven, like
passionate souls longing for release from earthly bondage; Spanish
women, full-breasted and sinuous, danced _boleros_, _fandangos_, while
the air rang with the joyous sound of castanets, and toreadors in
picturesque habiliments twanged the light guitar.

Alas! the Guadalquivir is like yellow mud, and moored to the busy quays
lie cargo-boats lading fruit or grain or mineral; there no perfume
scents the heavy air. The nights, indeed, are calm and clear, and the
stars shine brightly; but the river banks see no amours more romantic
than those of stokers from Liverpool or Glasgow, and their lady-loves
have neither youth nor beauty.

Yet Seville has many a real charm to counter-balance these