him the trouble of making up his mind where to go. _Vamonos al Prado!_
or, as Browning says,--

"Let's to the Prado and make the most of time."

The people of Madrid take more solid comfort in their promenade than any
I know. This is one of the inestimable benefits conferred upon them by
those wise and liberal free-thinkers Charles III. and Aranda. They knew
how important to the moral and physical health of the people a place of
recreation was. They reduced the hideous waste land on the east side of
the city to a breathing-space for future generations, turning the meadow
into a promenade and the hill into the Buen Retiro. The people growled
terribly at the time, as they did at nearly everything this prematurely
liberal government did for them. The wise king once wittily said: "My
people are like bad children that kick the shins of their nurse whenever
their faces are washed."

But they soon became reconciled to their Prado,--a name, by the way,
which runs through several idioms,--in Paris they had a Pre-aux-clercs,
the Clerks' Meadow, and the great park of Vienna is called the Prater.
It was originally the favorite scene of duels, and the cherished
trysting-place of lovers. But in modern times it is too popular for any
such selfish use.

The polite world takes its stately promenade in the winter afternoons in
the northern prolongation of the real Prado, called in the official
courtier style _Las delicias de Isabel Segunda,_ but in common speech
the Castilian Fountain, or _Castellana,_ to save time. So perfect is the
social discipline in these old countries that people who are not in
society never walk in this long promenade, which is open to all the