This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 edition. Excerpt: ... VALLADOLID. VALLADOLID, the rich, as Quevedo calls it, the famous dispenser of influenzas, was, of the cities lying on the north of the Tagus, the one which I most desired to see, although knowing that it contains no great monuments of art, nor anything modern of note. I had a particular sympathy for its name, history, and character, which I had imagined in my own way, from its inhabitants; it seemed to me that it must be an elegant, gay, and studious city, and I could not picture to myself its streets without seeing Gongora pass here, Cervantes there, Leonardo de Argensola on another side, and, in fact, all the other poets, historians, and savants, who lived there when the superb court of the monarchy was in existence. And thinking of the court, I saw a confused assemblage, in the large squares of this pleasant city, of religious processions, bull-fights, military display, masquerades, balls, --all the mixture of fetes in honor of the birth of Philip IV, from the arrival of the English admiral, with his cortege of six hundred cavaliers, to the last banquet of the famous one thousand two hundred dishes of meat, without counting those not served, to quote the popular tradition. I arrived at night, went to the first hotel, and fell asleep with the delightful thought that I should awake in an unknown city. And the awakening in an unknown city, when one has gone there from choice, is indeed a very great pleasure. The thought that from the moment you leave the house, until you return to it at night, you will do nothing but pass from one curiosity to another, and from one satisfaction to another. That all which you see will be quite new; that at every step you will learn something, and that every thing there will impress itself upon your memory..