the cavaliers stretch their legs and give signs of life.  All rise.  I offer my arm to Dolores or Florentina (is not this familiarity strange?), and in ten minutes you are in the alameda.  What a change?  All is now life and liveliness.  Such bowing, such kissing, such fluttering of fans, such gentle criticism of gentle friends!  But the fan is the most wonderful part of the whole scene.  A Spanish lady with her fan might shame the tactics of a troop of horse.  Now she unfurls it with the slow pomp and conscious elegance of a peacock.  Now she flutters it with all the languor of a listless beauty, now with all the liveliness of a vivacious one.  Now in the midst of a very tornado, she closes it with a whir which makes you start, pop!  In the midst of your confusion Dolores taps you on the elbow; you turn round to listen, and Florentina pokes you in your side.  Magical instrument!  You know that it speaks a particular language, and gallantry requires no other mode to express its most subtle conceits or its most unreasonable demands than this slight, delicate organ.  But remember, while you read, that here, as in England, it is not confined to your delightful sex.  I also have my fan, which makes my cane extremely jealous.  If you think I have grown extraordinarily effeminate, learn that in this scorching clime the soldier will not mount guard without one.  Night wears on, we sit, we take a panal, which is as quick work as snapdragon, and far more elegant; again we stroll.  Midnight clears the public walks, but few Spanish families retire till two.  A solitary bachelor like myself still wanders, or still lounges on a bench in the warm moonlight.  The last guitar dies away, the cathedral clock wakes up your reverie, you too seek your couch, and amid a gentle, sweet flow of loveliness, and light, and music, and fresh air, thus dies a day in Spain.  Adieu, my dearest mother.  A thousand loves to all.

A MALTESE SENSATION
[Sidenote:  Disraeli to his Father (1830)]

I had no need of letters of introduction here, and have already “troops of friends.”  The fact is, in our original steam-packet there were some agreeable fellows, officers, whom I believe I never mentioned to you.  They have been long expecting your worship’s offspring, and have gained great fame in repeating his third-rate stories at second hand; so in consequence of these messengers I am received with branches of palm.  Here the younkers do nothing but play rackets, billiards, and cards, race and smoke.  To govern men, you must either excel them in their accomplishments, or despise them.  Clay does one, I do the other, and we are both equally popular.  Affectation tells here even better than wit.  Yesterday, at the racket court, sitting in the gallery among strangers, the ball entered, and lightly struck me and fell at my feet.  I picked it up, and observing a young rifleman excessively stiff, I humbly requested him to forward its passage into the court, as I really had never thrown a ball in my life.  This incident has been the general subject of conversation at all the messes to-day!