I Do Not Know If They Had Been There Long Enough To Have Witnessed The
Murder Of Cromwell's Ambassador Done In Our Street By Two Jacobite
Gentlemen Who Could Not Abide His Coming To Honor In The Land Where They
Were In Exile From England.
That must have been sometime about the
middle of the century after Philip II., bigot as he was, could
Not bear
the more masterful bigotry of the archbishop of Toledo, and brought his
court from that ancient capital, and declared Madrid henceforward the
capital forever; which did not prevent Philip III. from taking his court
to Valladolid and making that the capital _en titre_ when he liked.
However, some other Philip or Charles, or whoever, returned with his
court to Madrid and it has ever since remained the capital, and has
come, with many natural disadvantages, to look its supremacy. For my
pleasure I would rather live in Seville, but that would be a luxurious
indulgence of the love of beauty, and like a preference of Venice in
Italy when there was Rome to live in. Madrid is not Rome, but it makes
you think of Rome as I have said, and if it had a better climate it
would make you think of Rome still more. Notoriously, however, it has
not a good climate and we had not come at the right season to get the
best of the bad. The bad season itself was perverse, for the rains do
not usually begin in their bitterness at Madrid before November, and now
they began early in October.
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