LETTER IX.

The Museum and Academy of Arts.--Scene on the Prado.--The Portuguese Ambassador and his comforters.--The Theatre.--A highly popular dancer.--Seguidillas in all their glory.

Sunday, Dec. 16th, 1787.

The kind, indefatigable Roxas came to conduct us to the Museum and Academy of Arts. It consists of seven or eight apartments, with cases all around them, in a plain, good style; the objects clearly arranged, and exposed to view in a very intelligible manner. There is a vast collection of minerals, corals, madrepores, and stalactites, from all the grottoes in the universe; and curious specimens of virgin-gold and silver. Amongst the latter, a lump weighing seventy pounds, which was shivered off an enormous mass by a master miner, who, after dining on it, with twelve or thirteen persons, hacked it to pieces, and distributed the fragments amongst his guests.

What pleased me most was a collection of Peruvian vases; a polished stone, which served the Incas for a mirror; and a linen mantle, which formerly adorned their copper-coloured shoulders, as finely woven as a shawl, and flowered in very nearly a similar manner, the colours as fresh and vivid as if new.

In the apartments of the academy is a most valuable collection of casts after the serene and graceful antique, and several fierce, obtrusive daubings by modern Spanish artists.

I found our acute, intelligent chargé-d’affaires’[26] card lying on my table when I got home, and a great many more, of equal whiteness; such a sight chills me like a fall of snow, for I think of the cold idleness of going about day after day dropping little bits of pasteboard in return. Verdeil and I dined tête-à-tête, planning schemes how to escape formal fussifications. No easy matter, I suspect, if I may judge from appearances.

Our repast and our council over, we hurried to the Prado, where a brilliant string of equipages was moving along in two files. In the middle paraded the state coaches of the royal family, containing their own precious selves, and their wonted accompaniment of bedchamber lords and ladies, duly bedizened. It was a gay spectacle; the music of the Swiss guards playing, and the evening sun shining bright on their showy uniforms. The botanic garden is separated from the walk by magnificent railings and pilasters, placed at regular distances, crowned with vases of aloes and yuccas. The verdure and fountains of this vast enclosure, terminated by a range of columned conservatories, with an entrance of very majestic architecture, has a delightful and striking effect.

From the Prado I drove to the Portuguese ambassador’s, who is laid up with a sore toe. Three diplomatic animals, two males and one female, were nursing and comforting him. He is most supremely dull, and so are his comforters. One of them in particular, who shall be nameless, quite asinine.

The little sympathy I feel for creatures of this genus, made me shorten my visit as much as I decently could, and return home to take up Roxas, who was waiting to accompany us to the Spanish theatre. They were acting the Barber of Seville, with Paesiello’s music, and singing better than at the opera. The entertainment ended with a sort of intermez, very characteristic of Spanish manners in low life; in which were introduced seguidillas. One of the dancers, a young fellow, smartly dressed as a maxo, so enraptured the audience, that they made him repeat his dance four times over; a French dancing-master would have absolutely shuddered at the manner in which he turned in his knees. The women sit by themselves in a gallery as dingy as limbo, wrapped up in their white mantillas, and looking like spectres. I never heard anything like the vociferation with which the pit called out for the seguidillas, nor the frantic, deafening applause they bestowed on their favourite dancer.

The play ended at eight, and we came back to tea by our fireside.