bly aware, the scene of the memorable battle between Taric and Don Roderic, which sealed the destinies of Spain; and we can guzzle and expatiate alternately, though it would be hard to realize any chivalric vision among the puffing caleseros and the coaleyed and slippered coquettes about us. Ah, too seducing, dangerously dear' flask of Séco! how I hate to leave you! But we must return. The sun already glances a red warning through the vines; and I like not a land of unanalyzed shadows. - * Again at Santa Maria (we have missed the bull-fight, I find, which occurred this morning)—and again leisurely undulating across the bay. Look! look at the salmon, over the side! You may trace them by the soft phosphoric light that streams in their wake. 'Tis vesper time. Those evening bells' chime deliciously over the water do they not? There is not the hurried jangling of the matins, when the changes from the numberless turrets are apt to get ludicrously athwart hawse' of each other, convincing me, I remember, in the first instance, that all the sacristans had either gone mad or were afflicted with St. Vitus's dance. The gathering lights are glorious! See them wink from the lofty lattice, and flash, a terrene galaxy, from the thronged and verdant square! We must certainly join the wakeful groups there; but, 'dost think I can get in, friend, at the gate?'—no matter; we'll take the license of Le Sage's devil, and alight forthwith in the Plaza San Antonio -the evening resort of a fair fraction of the sixty or seventy thousand who form the population of the town. How instinct with sauntering gayety and life! The first impression is that of a public garden, from the ample shrubbery, the stone seats, the many bright lamps, and the easy air of abandonment which characterizes all the native loungers; for your Andaluz is most scientific in accommodating himself to sultry weather; and then there are no wheel carriages at hand to torture you into too rapid a step, or stun you with their infamous rattle — robbing your companion of the few pithy remarks which your indolence allows you to let fall. The aspect of things is such, indeed, as might be expected in a region rife with chocolate and wine, and rather proverbial for a kind of quiet and secretive mirth. Do I hear the tinkle of a guitar?-and do you feel tired? Let it soothe us to sleep, in the half-English hotel of I forget what, or whom; but it has airy, oriental chambers, flowers and fruits, tidy waiters, and a pretty situation. Morning-and matins—and nine o'clock. What shall we do? take an olive and help yourself daintily from that dish of olla podrida. I propose to thread the streets for an hour, and lecture upon architecture. The houses we pass are chiefly Moorish in design, enclosing open courts within a double balustrade of two stories; a wet awning is often spread overhead in hot weather, and the occupants contrive to make a little lounging paradise with the aid of blossoming shrubbery. Many buildings are on a kind of Italian model-tall and roomy, with most luxurious verandahs. But here is the solemn and half-finished cathedral of (I think) Santa Cruz. It has already exhausted large sums in building, but being, like our Bunker-hill monument and many other broad-bottomed piles, rather short-winded, seems to have gotten entirely out of breath in its progress upward. Let's step within. Those ponderous arches are nobly sprung! and their quadruple support of polished and clustered pillars is well worthy of them. Here they stand, like the desert columns of Palmyra, or the giant stalactites of a cavern, with no flooring beneath but terra firma, save an occasional sorry flag-stone. I like the twilight gloom of this premature ruin; in the lap of a lonely Sierra, 't would have been a fine trysting-place' for the guerillas. Ha! a solitary old woman! how the deuse came she, brooding like a bat, in yon sombre alcove? But I had forgotten the attracting image of the Virgin, all wax and silk- the former wan and well executed, the latter sadly the worse for exposure. How preposterously out of place! but just the figure, anywhere, no doubt, for a Spanish old woman to adore-a legitimate cresset, 'pon my word, swinging above and stuck in this pilaster—a forty days' absolution, over the weighty signature of an archbishop, on the cheap condition of a baker's dozen of aves and paters, faithfully whispered to order in this haunted nook. The cloisters are boarded in, and the gates locked, which forbids farther exploring, so off with us to the walls, (a broad and beautiful promenade) by way of the time-honored church of St. Domingo, the catedrál' of St. somebody else and half a score of hoary, prison-like chapels and convents, which, but for a mellow organ or a lamp-lit procession of shaven monks, would hardly bribe us for delay.' * Thanks! those propitious intervening stars; you must have accomplished, long since, a delicious walk round the rampartsjostling an army of nondescript soldados, enjoying the intoxicating sea air, and studying the phases of many an Iberian Venus, under the partial eclipse of a half-closed blind or a side-long black veil ; while I have had, of course, a glorious siesta. Methinks we shall enjoy sunset on the signal tower. What a storied and lovely prospect lies bathed in the golden flush! The white city, sheening beneath us, with its level, plastered, and peopled roofs, its lines and undulary patches of tropic foliage, its antique squares and monastic turrets, in the very arms of the blue ocean; the sea itself, soothed down to a voluptuous hush, silvered with sunlight, and dotted with tiny sails; the brown forests and pretty villages of Medina Sidonia; the purple ridges of Ronda, half relieved against an amber sky, serve grandly to unite, in one attaching maze, The brilliant, fair and soft, the glories of old days.' On yonder little isthmus, where the dusty travelers are plodding and the mules tinkling homeward to Leon, the impetuous Essex gained a bloody footing and a dearly-bought advantage, in the expedition of Effingham and Sir Walter Raleigh. On that shore, the despairing duke of Medina swamped and fired his galleons, to balk his sturdy antagonists. Hanno's legions have drawn up on the more distant plain; and on yonder calm waters, not a great way off, was Trafalgar's victory secured. How much that we now see, is made sacred by historic association! But I will not talk. Let us exhaust the time in gazing and pondering; for the sun is just dipping below the horizon and when he takes his leave of fair Cadiz,' we, too, must bid her 'adios con usted.' W. IMPROMPTU. IN the clime of the East, where the orange trees bloom It floats to your cheek on its azure-dyed wing — Like that insect, dear girl, you have wounded my breast, 321 SKETCHES FROM MEMORY. BY A PEDESTRIAN. NO. I. WE are so fortunate as to have in our possession the portfolio of a friend, who traveled on foot in search of the picturesque over NewEngland and New-York. It contains many loose scraps and random sketches, which appear to have been thrown off at different intervals, as the scenes once observed were recalled to the mind of the writer by recent events or associations. He kept no journal nor set down any notes during his tour; but his recollection seems to have been faithful, and his powers of description as fresh and effective as if they had been tasked on the very spot which he describes. Some of his quiet delineations deserve rather to be called pictures than sketches, so lively are the colors shed over them. The first which we select, is a reminiscence of a day and night spent among the White Mountains, and will revive agreeable thoughts in the minds of those tourists who have but just returned from a visit to their sublime scenery. THE NOTCH. Ir was now the middle of September. We had come since. sunrise from Bartlett, passing up through the valley of the Saco, which extends between mountainous walls, sometimes with a steep ascent, but often as level as a church-aisle. All that day and two preceding ones, we had been loitering towards the heart of the White Mountains-those old crystal hills, whose mysterious brilliancy had gleamed upon our distant wanderings before we thought of visiting them. Height after height had risen and towered one above another, till the clouds began to hang below the peaks. Down their slopes, were the red path-ways of the Slides, those avalanches of earth, stones and trees, which descend into the hollows, leaving vestiges of their track, hardly to be effaced by the vegetation of ages. We had mountains behind us and mountains on each side, and a group of mightier ones ahead. Still our road went up along the Saco, right towards the centre of that group, as if to climb above the clouds, in its passage to the farther region. In old times, the settlers used to be astounded by the inroads of the northern Indians, coming down upon them from this mountain rampart, through some defile known only to themselves. It is indeed a wondrous path. A demon, it might be fancied, or one of the Titans, was traveling up the valley, elbowing the heights carelessly aside as he passed, till at length a great mountain took its stand directly across his intended road. He tarries not for such an obstacle, but rending it asunder, a thousand feet from peak to base, discloses its treasures of hidden minerals, its sunless waters, all the secrets of the mountain's inmost heart, with a mighty fracture of rugged precipices on each side. This is the Notch of the White Hills. Shame on me, that I have attempted to describe it by so mean an image-feeling, as I do, that it is one of those symbolic scenes, which lead the mind to the sentiment, though not to the conception, of Omnipotence. * We had now reached a narrow passage, which showed almost the appearance of having been cut by human strength and artifice in the solid rock. There was a wall of granite on each side, high and precipitous, especially on our right, and so smooth that a few evergreens could hardly find foothold enough to grow there. This is the entrance, or, in the direction we were going, the extremity of the romantic defile of the Notch. Before emerging from it, the rattling of wheels approached behind us, and a stage-coach rumbled out of the mountain, with seats on top and trunks behind, and a smart driver, in a drab great-coat, touching_the_wheel horses with the whip-stock, and reining in the leaders. To my mind, there was a sort of poetry in such an incident, hardly inferior to what would have accompanied the painted array of an Indian war-party, gliding forth from the same wild chasm. All the passengers, except a very fat lady on the back seat, had alighted. One was a mineralogist, a scientific, green-spectacled figure in black, bearing a heavy hammer, with which he did great damage to the precipices, and put the fragments in his pocket. Another was a well-dressed young man, who carried an operaglass set in gold, and seemed to be making a quotation from some of Byron's rhapsodies on mountain scenery. There was also a trader, returning from Portland to the upper part of Vermont ; and a fair young girl, with a very faint bloom, like one of those pale and delicate flowers, which sometimes occur among Alpine cliffs. They disappeared, and we followed them, passing through a deep pine forest, which, for some miles, allowed us to see nothing but its own dismal shade. Towards night-fall, we reached a level amphitheatre, surrounded by a great rampart of hills, which shut out the sunshine long before it left the external world. It was here that we obtained our first view, except at a distance, of the principal group of mountains. They are majestic, and even awful, when contemplated in a proper mood; yet, by their breadth of base, and the long ridges which support them, give the idea of immense bulk, rather than of towering height. Mount Washington, indeed, looked near to Heaven; he was white with snow a mile downward, and had caught the only cloud that was sailing through the atmosphere, to veil his head. Let us forget the |