This is a fortified city, well built, but every house has the appearance
of a convent. I went into the market, where fruit, flesh, and
vegetables, were to be sold in abundance; but instead of that noise
which French and English markets abound with, a general silence and
gravity reigned throughout; which, can hardly be thought possible, where
so many buyers and sellers were collected together. I bought a basket of
figs, but the vender of them spoke to me as softly as if we had been
engaged in a conspiracy, but she did not attempt to impose; I dare say,
she asked me no more than she would have demanded of a Spaniard. The
manners of people are certainly infectious; my spirits sunk in this
town; and I wanted nothing but the language, and a long cloak, to make
me a compleat Spaniard. Our inn was the Golden Fountain; and,
considering it was in Spain, not a bad one. If the town, however, was
gloomy, the country round about it exhibited all the beauties nature can
boast of.

In climates, says some writer, where the earth seems to be the pride and
masterpiece of nature, rags, and dirt, ghastly countenances, and misery
under every form, are oftener met with, than in those countries less
favoured by nature; and the forlorn and wretched condition of the people
in general seemed to belie and disgrace their native soil. Certain it
is, that the natives of the southern parts of Europe have neither the
beauty, the strength, nor comeliness of men born in more northern
climates. I have seen in the South of France, in Spain, and Portugal,
the aged especially of both sexes, who hardly appeared human! nor do
you see, in general, even among the youthful, much more beauty than that
which youth alone must give; for youth itself is beauty. Whoever
compares the natives of Switzerland, England, Ireland, and Scotland,
with those of Spain, Portugal, or other Southern climates, will find,
that men born among cold, bleak mountains, are infinitely superior to