But the cold winds blew sharply, and our travellers resolved to hurry south, and reserve the further treasures of Burgos for inspection on their return. The night train conveyed them safely to Madrid, where they found a most comfortable hotel in the "Ville de Paris," lately opened by an enterprising Frenchman, in the "Puelta del Sol;" and received the kindest of welcomes from the English minister, the Count T. D., and other old friends. It was Sunday morning, and the first object was to find a church near at hand. These are not wanting in Madrid, but all are modern, and few in good taste: the nicest and best served is undoubtedly that of "St. Louis des Français," though the approach to it through the crowded market is rather disagreeable early in the morning. The witty writer of "Les Lettres d'Espagne" says truly: "Madrid _ne me dit rien:_ c'est moderne, aligné, propre et civilisé." As for the climate, it is detestable: bitterly cold in winter, the east wind searching out every rheumatic joint in one's frame, and pitilessly driving round the corners of every street; burning hot in summer, with a glare and dust which nearly equal that of Cairo in a simoom.
The Gallery, however, compensates for all. Our travellers had spent months at Florence, at Rome, at Dresden, and fancied that nothing could come up to the Pitti, the Uffizi, or the Vatican--that no picture could equal the "San Sisto;" but they found they had yet much to learn. No one who has not been in Spain can so much as imagine what Murillo is. In England he is looked upon as the clever painter of picturesque brown beggar-boys: there is not one of these subjects to be found in Spain, from St. Sebastian to Gibraltar! At Madrid, at Cadiz, but especially at Seville, one learns to know him as he is--that is, the great mystical religious painter of the seventeenth century, embodying in his wonderful conceptions all that is most sublime and ecstatic in devotion, and in the representation of divine love. The English minister, speaking of this one day to a lady of the party, explained it very simply, by saying that the English generally only carried off those of his works in which the Catholic feeling was not so strongly displayed. It would be hopeless to attempt to describe all his pictures in the Madrid Gallery. The Saviour and St. John, as boys, drinking out of a shell, is perhaps the most delicate and exquisite in coloring and expression; but the "Conception" surpasses all. No one should compare it with the Louvre pictures of the same subject. There is a refinement, a tenderness, and a beauty in the Madrid "Conception" entirely wanting in the one stolen by the French. Then there is Velasquez, with his inimitable portraits; full of droll originality, as the "AEsop;" or of deep historical interest, as his "Philip IV.;" or of sublime piety, as in his "Crucifixion," with the hair falling over one side of the Saviour's face, which the pierced and fastened hands cannot push aside: each and all are priceless treasures, and there must be sixty or seventy in that one long room. Ford says that "Velasquez is the Homer of the Spanish school, of which Murillo is the Virgil." Then there are Riberas, and Zurbarans, Divino Morales, Juan Joanes, Alonso Caño, and half-a-dozen other artists, whose very names are scarcely known out of Spain, and all of whose works are impregnated with that mystic, devotional self-sacrificing spirit which is the essence of Catholicism. The Italian school is equally magnificently represented. There are exquisite Raphaels, one especially, "La Perla," once belonging to our Charles I., and sold by the Puritans to the Spanish king; the "Spasimo," the "Vergin del Pesce," etc.; beautiful Titians, not only portraits, but one, a "Magdalen," which is unknown to us by engravings or photographs in England, where, in a green robe, she is flying from the assaults of the devil, represented by a monstrous dragon, and in which the drawing is as wonderful as the coloring; beautiful G. Bellinis, and Luinis, and Andrea del Sartos (especially one of his wife), and Paul Veronese, and others of the Venetian and Milanese schools. In a lower room there are Dutch and Flemish chefs-d'oeuvre without end: Rubens, and Vandyke, and Teniers, and Breughel, and Holbein, and the rest. It is a gallery bewildering from the number of its pictures, but with the rare merit of almost all being good; and they are so arranged that the visitor can see them with perfect comfort at any hour of the day.