lling out the syllables in their soft
Spanish set our heart beating.

It was a certain disappointment to find our favourite Four Nations--at
that time one of the best hotels in Spain--closed. We had to put up with
the Falcon, not by any means the same thing. It is pleasant to return to
familiar quarters and people who welcome you as old habitues. The
atmosphere of the Falcon was also more commercial and had no repose
about it. Yet it was on the Rambla, and the next morning we awoke to the
well-known cries of Barcelona, the old familiar scene.

A very Spanish scene, with its broad imposing thoroughfare and double
row of well-grown trees rustling in the wind, glinting in the sunshine,
filling the air with music and flashes of light. As the morning went on,
the broad road became more crowded. Stretching far down, under the
trees, were flower-stalls full of lovely blossoms. Roses, violets and
hyacinths scented the air. It was delightful to see such profusion in
November; to find blue skies and balmy airs rivalling the flowers. This
land of perpetual summer is highly favoured. If a cold wind arises,
turning the skies to winter, it is only for a short interval. Though it
be December, summer soon returns, and the sunny clime is all the
lovelier by contrast.

Like the Hotel Falcon, the element of Barcelona is, we have said,
commercial. It is perhaps the most flourishing and enterprising of all
the towns of Spain. There are immense ship-building yards, and all sorts
of ironwork is made, but the town itself has no sign or sound of
manufacturing. It has been called the Manchester of Spain, yet its skies
are for ever blue, the air is clear and untainted: a peculiar brilliancy
and splendour of atmosphere not often met with even in the sunny South.

The country for many miles around is beautiful and undulating; beyond
the immediate hills it has often a wild and savage grandeur that
sometimes reaches the sublime. Year by year the town grows in extent.
Well-organised tramways carry you to and fro through endless
thoroughfares. The richer merchants have built themselves streets of
palatial residences that stretch away into suburbs. Few cities are so
brilliantly lighted. If Spain is a poor country, Barcelona seems to have
escaped the evil. There is animation about it, perpetual movement, a
quiet activity. For it is quiet with all its business and energy, and so
far has the advantage over Madrid, where the commercial element was less