Toledo, the Story of an Old Spanish Capital

WHAT more stupefying contrast than that of cheap commonplace Madrid (cheap alas! only in the artistic sense) and the legendary still visage of Toledo? The capital you leave abustle with modern movement, glaring, gesticulating, chattering, animated in its own empty and insignificant fashion, with its pleasant street of Alcala, so engagingly unhistoric, its shop-fronts full of expensive and second-rate articles from other capitals, the vulgar vivacity of the Puerta del Sol thronged with everlasting gossips in trousers and wide-brimmed hats; with its swindling hotel-keepers and insolent drivers. The train sweeps you past the wide empty bed of the Manzanares, covered here and there with a film you understand by courtesy to represent a river, and the city behind is a gay compact picture, slightly waving upward from its bridges, white and flourishing above the broad yellow plain. The tones of the land are rough and crude, red striking hotly against brown and greyish purple. Here and there a solitary hill, burnt and defoliaged, with a glimpse of ruined ramparts, a mule-path along which a file of peasants pass, the women lost in roomy saddles, with feet dangling in the air, and red or yellow handkerchiefs tied under their chins. Carts move slowly along the old diligence road, guided by heavy-browed males.