It was a cold frosty morning, and the ground, which had been cut up during recent rains, was now congealed into a solid mass, which, in the immediate rounds of the city, presented a rough surface incapable of being travelled over with much rapidity. Issuing by the gate of Santa Barbara, we proceeded along under the walls by the barracks of the Guards, the magnificent palace of Liria, and the Seminario de Nobles, to the small, but neat and beautiful church of San Antonio de las Floridas, where we turned in the direction of the royal road, which conducts to the Escorial. A little farther on we came to the grounds of Moncloa, belonging to the King, after which no habitation occurs before the toll-house at the Puerta de Hierro, as the spot is called from its lofty portal like a triumphal arch, with three iron gates, where the road turns to the left, to cross the river by a long costly bridge of masonry, ornamented with a statue of Ferdinand and another of Isabel, placed on its parapets. After leaving the river, the road continually ascends through a bleak, desolate, dreary region with the ridge of the Guadarrama bounding the horizon. Presently we reach the gardens and stunted groves of the royal country house of Zarzuela; and at two leagues from Madrid the little village of Las Rozas.

From Las Rozas to the equally miserable village of Galapagar, a space of nearly three leagues, not a single inhabited house occurs on the road,

except a small stone cottage, a solitary ventorrillo, where the traveller may gather a little breath for the trials which await him towards the end of the journey. You pass, indeed, the fragments of several post houses, of which little remains but their stone walls thrown about in confusion and ruin. We whiled away our time in conversation as we best might; for on the way there was nothing to see but desolation, and still desolation.

Castile, it is well known, is nearly destitute of trees. Various theories exist to account for this fact, which forces itself upon the attention every where, and not least between Madrid and San Lorenzo. Their absence is generally ascribed to the prejudice of the Castilians against planting them; it being a prevalent opinion that they have an unfavorable effect on the air. Others aver that the climate and soil are uncongenial to their growth. However this may be, certain it is that the few trees in this region have a sickly aspect, a hue of disease, quite remarkable to the eye. The Zarzuela is planted with trees, but they have the appearance of low tufted bushes. Trees have been placed occasionally along the road; but their trunks are dwarfish, stubbed, often swollen, not seldom hollow, and with a few stinted branches springing from the summit; and they are almost never tall vigorous trees with full branches and luxuriant sprouts. The consequence is that while the whole country, except where planted with wheat, has the face of a desert, it is

swept over by the sharp winds of the mountains in winter, and in the summer is parched up by the unobstructed rays of the burning sun.

At Galapagar, for the first time, we could plainly descry and distinguish the monastery of San Lorenzo. A stupendous mass of buildings and spires stood on the declivity of the mountain, while the lofty sierra filled the entire back ground, rising like a wall behind the monastery, and covered with a mantle of snows. The prospect was gloomy beyond description. Embosomed in a vast amphitheatre of precipitous cliffs, the Escorial seemed to lose all its magnificence as a work of art, and to look rather like one of the freaks of nature, when she piled up these everlasting rocks. That which had employed the resources of a vast empire for so many years in painfully heaping up its granite walls, what was it, after all, in comparison with the mighty peaks and pinnacles of the sierra, in the midst of which it stood, hardly claiming equality with the meanest among their number? The Pyramids soar upwards from the level surface of the desert, and the impression of their vastness is increased by the contrast; but San Lorenzo, which the Spaniards claim to be the eighth wonder of human art, and which, when examined in the detail, almost warrants the assumption, is so situated that, in the first grand prospect, all sense of its architectural grandeur disappears before the majesty of creation. Man has presumed to pile together his

little heap of stones, where nature had long since preoccupied the field with the unapproashabla profusion of her own gigantic masses. Such, and so vain, is the caprice of despotism.

During the whole ride, although the sun shone bright and clear, a cutting blast had descended upon us from the mountains; and as we approached them, it gradually increased to a hurricane of wind and snow.

Our unsteady vehicle could ill withstand the shock of such a tempest, upon the slippery and uneven ground over which a part of the road proceeded. Once, before reaching the village below the monastery, called Escorial Bajo, we had been overturned in a moment of incautious driving, although without sustaining any serious injury. But the ascent from Escorial Bajo, or the lower village, to the upper one, which is grouped near the monastery and called Escorial Alto, was more tempestuous and terrific than any thing of the kind, which, even in our own variable climate of driving snows and sweeping storms, it was ever my lot to experience. The atmosphere was full of ice or snow, but it was not a descent of gentle flakes, such as the surcharged sky lets fall upon us in the months of winter; it was the frozen covering of the Guadarrama, torn and hurled from its abiding place by the fury of the blast, and dashed in piercing fragments down the sides of the steep, blinding the eyes and torturing the face. Mixed with it came the sharp dust of the road and fields, which, being

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naked of snow, was torn up in eddying clouds, so to darkzon the very air with the commingled sweepings of the tempest. We did not, of course, attempt to ascend the acclivity within the calesa. Indeed, it required all our combined efforts to prevent its being overturned by the hurricane, by steadying its wheels, and aiding the horse in his task; or rather we ourselves, Don Jaime, myself, and the mozo, were glad to cling together in a joint effort with the strength of the horse and the vis inertia of the heavy vehicle, for our mutual security and preservation. At times, it seemed as if our utmost exertions would be fruitless, and that we must be snatched up from the earth by the blast, and hurled along by it in some whirling cloud of snow to the foot of the mountain; and it was with emotions of hearty gratitude for our escape, that we at length arrived within the solid walls of the Fonda de los Milaneses.

It was now too late to visit the monastery, even had the weather been such as to render it desirable. We resolved, therefore, to take our ease at the inn, with such appliances to comfort as 'mine host' might furnish, in the hope of seeing a better condition of the elements on the morrow. By the ample fire of the cocina, that hospitable common room of every Spanish inn, where gentlemen and muleteer are alike privileged to chat over the savory viands in preparation for their respective meals, we restored the circulation of our chilled limbs, while Paquita