The latter, however, is so fortunately close to the edge of France that those who come as near as Biarritz or Pau should assuredly make this brief dip over the border.

San Sebastian is strictly new; its predecessors have been burned five times, one upon the other, the last being brought to ashes by the soldiers of Wellington; and it is liable to be burned again whenever France and Spain begin to fight again across it.  It is an excellent model for that worthy fowl, the phoenix, for it has risen with undismayed cheerfulness from each holocaust.  The present representative is in three segments.  The city itself is composed of two, and the citadel makes a fairly important third.  From a military point of view, the citadel was once counted first, and the city itself made an unimportant third,—­with no second.  But modern gunnery has changed that estimate.

Of the two parts of the city proper, one is national, the other international; they do not unite, but adjoin, welded by a central promenade, the Alameda.  Each is distinct, and has little to do with the life of the other.  The native population centres wholly in the west half; we drift first over to this, in our afternoon walk, and scan its appearance and people with inquisitive though decorous interest.  This section, comprising much of what was the old town, has evidently aimed to reproduce it; it has been rebuilt with persistent regard to the former municipal type, and shows to-day a curious combination of bright, new and well constructed tenements, built on a dark, old and ill instructed plan.  The streets are left narrow,—­very narrow.  The black doorways and halls, as we peer in, in passing, are cramped and forbidding; the projecting balconies approach each other overhead, and the oblong yellow buildings themselves rise to overshadowing height.  Like soldiers on dress parade they stand, relentlessly regular and uniform, block after block, and their walled lanes, straight and similar and uncharacteristic, cross and weave themselves into a stiff, right-angled check, exasperating and profitless, unrelieved by a hint at variation of outline, by a picturesque eave or gable, or a single artistic “bit;”

The cathedral does indeed possess some interest, particularly its carved front of light-colored stone; and here and there about it are a few old houses, unsutteed relicts, that have not bowed to the new regime.  The shops in this part of the town are less individual than one would expect, though we find them not devoid of a certain variety.  The specialty of the place is the enameling of gold and silver upon iron.  Jewelry and small articles are made of this ware in elaborate designs and with great daintiness and skill.  Outside of this, San Sebastian does not seem to have invented any new wants for humanity, and its shops do not seek to supply any but the old.