Note 79 — Appendices

To further show the extravagant way of thinking and behaving of the Spaniard of the seventeenth century, the same author sets aside the sneering objection justly made by foreign writers to the river Manzanares at Madrid—namely, that it has no water—by remarking with exquisite complacency, that here precisely lies the crowning merit and advantage of the Manzanares over rival streams; in that it amuses people without endangering their lives. In the reigns of Philip the Fourth and Charles the Second, a favourite promenade of the Madrid aristocracy was the waterless channel of this river, in which, according to this work, “coaches and carriages do duty for a gondola, and form a pleasant imitation of the boats and palaces of Venice.”