Retiro, used by Spaniards as a summer lounge, but where an Englishman, desirous of good honest exercise, may obtain it at almost any season. Hardly any Spaniards walk for exercise. They idle and saunter about, stopping occasionally when the conversation gets earnest or fast, as if they could not move legs and tongue simultaneously; now sitting on a bench, now lingering to roll a paper cigar, and wait the arrival of some smoker whom they see approaching with a light. Then, from the lowest to the highest, and except in the great heats of summer, they are a cloakwearing people, and the cloak is the lounger's garment par excellence, But whilst they dawdle by the pond and look at the gold fish, a foreigner, bent on opening his pores and appetite, may get a pleasant walk enough by striding two or three times completely round the Retiro. Not that this garden (for particulars of which Ford may be consulted) will appear otherwise than scrubby, stunted, and paltry compared with Kensington or the Tuileries, amidst whose brilliant flower-beds and rich masses of foliage one may fancy oneself remote from towns; but, nevertheless, when one's eyes have got parched and irritated by the dust and glare of Madrid streets, it is a relief to seek the shades of the Buen Retiro, which one is fain to admit is really a good retreat. In Spain, if one would be contented, one must not compare with other countries; and so we must not too severely criticise the dwarfish trees, artificially but imperfectly irrigated, the seedy flowers that tell of bad gardening, the want of that fresh soft emerald turf the eye delights to rest upon. There is a mixture of cultivation and wildness in the Retiro which is not disagreeable; to some portions a good deal of care is evidently given; else where you come upon patches of waste ground serving as nurseries for young trees, and overgrown with poppies, yellow colt's-foot, rank dogdaisy, scentless wild mignonette, and particularly with the rose-pink blossom of the marsh-mallow, which one might imagine nature had scat

as a corrective of the scorching irritating climate. Here and there are cypress-grown bits, which, combined with the bright clear climate, remind one of Turkish cemetery scenery. For adopting the Retiro as an habitual walk, there is the additional reason that there is very little pleasure in walking in the streets of Madrid. When one has got accustomed to their aspect, and the charm of novelty has worn off, they offer little attraction; and in most of them, moreover, the footpath is too narrow, and the passengers are too numerous, for rapid progress to be practicable. The stranger will be struck by one of their features; the immense number of second-hand shops, miscellaneous stores, a low description of what the French call brica-brac shops, in which are offered for sale ancient furniture and curiosities, brass chandeliers and ornaments, fantastical wearing apparel, oil-paintings without frames, and soiled engravings with frames-in short, a few things that are either useful or ornamental mixed up with an immensity of rubbish. Foreigners who come to Spain with a notion that they cannot fail to pick up precious and cheap specimens of the Spanish masters, will hardly find it worth while to rummage these shops, in which the works of art are generally of an extremely low class, most of them mere daubs from the brush of artists who have evidently mistaken their vocation. The engravings are rather better worth notice. The majority of them are of an uninteresting kind

old French engravings, portraits of Ferdinand VII., of Maria Christina, and of Isabel II., and of Spanish generals, many of whom are unknown to fame beyond their native land; engravings of naval battles at the end of the last century, and lithographs of actions during the War of Independence and the conflict with Don Carlos. The rising in Madrid on the 2d May 1808, and the defence of Saragossa, are very favourite subjects, although we regret to say that the heroic maid of Saragossa, she

"Who hung so fiercely on the flying foe, Foil'd by a woman's hand, before a

(and who died, by thy, the other

As regar 13

ever stamood upon was an oval line

engraving, not twey exemted, which bore beneath it, in Spanish, The Most Excellent Lord Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo. The inscription might not have struck us, but the features did; there was no mistaking the aquiline nose, and the falcon giance of the clear well-opened eye. It was the Duke, with his Spanish title, which he so well earned, but by which he is least known--a very handsome pleasing likeness of him as a young man, in a plain uniform, with the collar and badge of the Golden Fleece round his neck and a couple of stars on his breast. No painter's name was signed, but the engraver had taken care to inform all beholders that Josef Rico lo grabó en Cadiz. The shopkeeper did not seem to have any clear idea who this Duke of Ciudad odrigo was; he was a grande de

, of that there could be no

me

ane nade 23e I in Vera Sa Tics Teicis a Ilouse, and THE STAT Tut with the af er reneris iA KES bus à se of weir inccine. TOCacy, and orde in macrobe, tRodzi: we, is we care and reSOHUTLLY MUHd to the pormi I a hers, is act to be suca Sca Where I is a plant of scanty DUTIL and where all that is exotice is envied ani daiked. As the thought crossed our minde, our attention was attracted by a show-board, on which were pasted a number of engravings, ani amongst these some caricatures, one of which, of ancient date, greatly de lighted uz It was entitled. Mercha precipitada del Ejercito Ingles, iends a 8000rrer a 84s aliados — "Precipitate March of the English Army going to succour its Allies." On a crawfish was seated an English general, with his hands in a muff; behind him came his second in command and his army, all in magnificent red coats, and arrayed on the back of a large tortoise. Up in the clouds, in the distance, Spain was typified by a soldier in Spanish uniform, with a vulture perched on his shoulders, and preying on his vitals. He calls out for help, and bids his allies hasten. “We shall get there in time," the English commander replies." Ya llegaremos, asi, asi." As a caricature it was not bad, and it was also an exemplification of the habitual ingratitude of Spaniards to

amusing little book, is one that says, Fray modesto nunca fue prior-"The modest friar was never prior;" for there surely never was a country where diffident merit had so little chance, and where so many ignorant knaves attained to the highest places by dint of mere assurance, and in virtue of the ridiculously exorbitant value they set upon themselves.

But we are in Madrid, Ebony, and in the dogdays. The sun blazes pitilessly out of an indigo sky; there is no coolness in the feeble breeze which scarcely stirs the striped awnings of the balconies, or rustles the leaves of the rose-laurels in the window; the streets are deserted; at yonder corner a group of porters and lazzaroni lie sleeping on the pavement; on the other side of the plaza, the flower

sellers have withdrawn themselves and their merchandise within the deep shadow of the arcades, and slumber on their chairs, insured against customers at this torrid hour; the puffy quail, which hangs, in what appears to us a cruelly small cage, at a neighbouring window, has ceased his monotonous call, and is taking the siesta; the last lingering streaks of snow have melted from the Guadarama summits, now dimly seen through the sultry mists that shroud them: it is fine weather for sleepalso for brain-fever and hydrophobia, but certainly not for any kind of exertion. And so we lay down our pen, retaining it only long enough to sign, now as ever, your faithful VEDETTE. Madrid, July 1857.

THE British public is notoriously slow to realise a great disaster. The national self-reliance seems impenetrable to the voice of warning: at the first note of evil tidings, the money-market-our only sensitive organ-is kept quiet by assurances that the accounts are exaggerated, and the worst is over. In Parliament, a Government which has no secrets from the enemy either evades inquiry, or answers with a misplaced vaunt. It is only by degrees that the truth creeps out. Private information appears in the papers; admissions are gradually extorted of all the redtapists, denied before; and as the different statements get pieced together, the public wakes up with a roar, and incontinently plunges into a panic. Then a minister or a cabinet must be sacrificed; committees and commissions are voted to inquire whom we shall hang; millions are flung about in frantic profusion; reforms long talked of are adopted with bewildering precipitation-till, having put itself through all its paces, and beginning to suspect that its indignation is hardly more creditable than the original impassibility, the nanimous public subsides into a and finishes with the indis

criminate decoration of accusers and accused.

Such is the routine: it has been faithfully followed, up to the time we write, in the matter of the Bengal mutiny; it may have completed its circle before what we write can appear in print. The disaffection which, long smouldering in the Bengal army, began to show itself in action as early as January last, attained to a crisis in the second week of May. An official narrative of its rise and progress was despatched from Calcutta on the 18th of that month. Lord Ellenborough, with his usual vigilance, adverted to the subject in the House of Lords on the 9th June, and was answered by Lord Granville, that he hoped the accounts were exaggerated! Two days after, Mr Vernon Smith, in opposing the petition of some missionaries in Bengal, told the House "it could not be disguised that considerable disaffection prevailed among the troops, in consequence of a prevalent notion that a compulsory conversion of the natives was intended." He added, that "it was not his wish to alarm the House or the public-the agitation, he trusted, was limited to a few of the troops, and would speedily be

repressed!" The President of the Board of Control was at this time in possession of despatches announcing the disappearance of six regiments from the strength of the Bengal army, the commission of horrible atrocities by the Sepoys on their officers, and the seizure of Delhi with the proclamation of a Mussulman emperor! To Lord Ellenborough's suggestion that a proclamation should be issued to tranquillise the angry suspicions of the native soldiery, Lord Granville replied-for there must always be a reply-that the Indian Government had acted judiciously in not taking any such step. Yet, if his lordship had read his despatches, he would have found that a similar suggestion had proceeded from the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-western Provinces; and the proclamation was actually issued by the Governor-General on the 16th May !

So unequal, too, was the action of the home authorities to the emergency reported, that, notwithstanding the loud cry from India for the immediate despatch of every English soldier that could be spared, it was thought enough, as late as the end of June, to have placed four regiments under orders to embark for India. Happily 10,000 men had returned to Bombay from the Persian expedition, and the force despatched from this country for China will have been diverted to a duty more consonant with justice and the security of the British Empire. For these reinforcements, however, the Indian Government is no way indebted to the foresight or judgment of the Cabinet at home. Their mouthpiece in the House of Lords again assured us, on the 29th June, that the disaffection in India was exaggerated by the noble earl. There was no occasion for alarm, and it was quite unnecessary to call out the militia." On the same evening the President of the Board of Control told the other House that the additional forces were sent out simply as a measure of security, not at all as believing the empire of India to be in peril.

Very different, and much more sagacious, was the language held by the leader of the Conservative Opposition.

"No one," said Mr Disraeli, "could shut his eyes to the extreme peril to which, at this moment, our authority is subject in that country; but I cannot say-little as my confidence has ever been in the Government of India

that I take those despairing or desperate views with respect to our position which, in moments of danger or calamity, are too often prevalent. I would express my opinion, that the tenure by which we hold India is not a frail tenure; but when we consider that that great country is inhabited by twenty-five nations, different in race, different in religion, and different in language, I think it is not easy-perhaps it is not possible for such heterogeneous elements to fuse into perfect combination. EVERYTHING, HOWEVER, IS

POSSIBLE EVERY DISASTER IS PRACTICABLE IF THERE BE AN INEFFICIENT OR NEGLIGENT GOVERNMENT.'

These are the sentiments which actuate, to a man, the persons now in England best acquainted with the condition of India. Of all dangers or disasters, there is none which more quickly sends the blood out of an old Anglo-Indian's face than the prospect of mutiny among the native troops on the ground of caste or religion. Yet this is the very danger of which the Home Government and the public generally were apprised with so little emotion. Anglo-Indians, however, are in sufficient numbers at home to impart their apprehensions to a large portion of society. By the middle of July, Ministers had roused themselves to the determination of sending 20,000 troops to India. The President of the India Board-of whom Lord Ellenborough, with more candour than politeness, declared that "in his constant and extensive communications with gentlemen connected with India, he never met a man who had not the most thorough distrust of the right hon. gentleman,"

promised to lay "papers" on the table of Parliament; and on the 27th, the question attained the dignity of a field-day in the House of Commons. Mr Vernon Smith was then content to maintain that it was a "mere military mutiny," not a national revolt, we had to deal with. Admitting the delicacy and importance