George Borrow came to Madrid, on his Bible-distributing mission, and lodged in the Calle de la Zarza, “a dark, dirty street, which, however, was close to the Puerta del Sol, the most central point of Madrid.” Borrow went to see two criminals strangled, and gathered some vivid and lurid impressions of the life among the manolos, “the rabble of Madrid.” He declares that the walls of the city enclose “the most extraordinary vital mass to be found in the entire world,” and claims Madrid as essentially Spanish. This is true only if we have regard for the fact that the metropolis of Spain has still a character of its own, and is in many respects more “European” and modern than Seville, Cadiz, Malaga, and Granada. In Cordova and Toledo we are reminded at every step of the influence of the Morisco, but in Madrid we recall the Spain of Charles V. and of the Bourbons.
Since 1836, Madrid has been a University city. The academy founded at Alcalá was transferred here at that time, and to-day there are about eight thousand students. The Real Academia de Bellas Artes was founded here towards the middle of the eighteenth century. Several fine examples of the art of Murillo are in the gallery of the Academy, and there are also works by Ribera, Rubens, Zurbaran, and Alonso Cano. Besides these institutions there are the Academy of History, the Academy of Science, the Academy of Medicine, and a number of other learned societies.
The Museum of Modern Art contains only a few paintings of importance, but there are some notable pictures by Fortuny, and a few pieces of modern sculpture. The great treasury of art, the Prado Gallery, is fully described in a separate volume of this series. It is the greatest glory of Madrid.
The Naval Museum will recall the past maritime supremacy of Spain. In the National Library there are nearly a million books and a large number of manuscripts, including the beautiful, illuminated Gothic work dating from the tenth century, a thirteenth-century Bible, and the Siete Partidas of Alfonso the Learned. The National Museum of Archæology contains a very interesting collection of Roman, Gothic, and Moorish antiquities.
It would be difficult to find a word which would convey a true impression of a town, but if we were limited to the employment of a single term to describe Madrid, _rococo_ would suggest itself. The capital is elegant, fanciful, and yet stately. It does not smile like Seville, nor frown like Toledo, and yet it is neither sad nor stern. Granada and Cordova sleep. Madrid never seems to slumber; it is one of the most restless places upon the earth. It has the dignity of Castile and the frivolity of Paris; it exhibits the congestion of London in parts within its gates, but it has no dingy, sunless slums, and few signs of an ugly indigence.
