new toy by cutting up half a dozen rainbows
into a salad, seasoning the dish by slicing
in a sunset cloud, two dozens of Rowney's
best water-colours, and serving up with a
garnish of fricasseed summer-flowers,
particularly tulips, adding a sprinkle of jewel-dust
and some layers of butterflies cut small "to
liking."

Now why I bought a kaleidoscope, it
would puzzle a Dutchman to tell. I suppose,
for the same reason I sent my maiden aunt
a caricature of herself, and got "scratched"
out of her will the same evening. The fact
is, I am still boy at my heart, and like
what I liked as a boy, particularly cricket,
hardbake, foxhunting, the Times, marbles,
and kaleidoscopes. So, seeing at an English
store in Cordova, that ancient Moorish city
—the city of Cordova—a kaleidoscope stuck
up, looking low and forlorn, like a deserted
and orphan obelisk, among a row of pink
hair-oil bottles with some fairy-like French
name on them, some bootjacks, and white
Spanish slippers—for black boots, or, indeed,
leather boots at all, are seldom worn in
burning Andalusia—I bought it, because on
those wet days in London, when as a child
I used to rummage my toy cupboard in the
back parlour, and after dismembering the
musical cart, unmaking the toy carpenter's
tools, and beating my pasteboard shield with
the great vermilion cross to a jelly, I used
to always fall back to that untiring, delicious,
magical kaleidoscope—the optical wonder
that did not set me to dissect light, or settle
scientific laws, but made me an artist's
colourman till death do us part.

But this Spanish kaleidoscope is not the
old toy quite; no, it has a spice of magic and
the black art about it. The old London
toy was a mere shake-up of geometric flowers,
of rainbow crystals, jostling and shuffling
with regimental haste into budding stars and
radiant mosaic wheels, a sort of angelic
pattern book in fact, such as an artificial-
flower maker might use in Elysium—a
catalogue of fossil flowers of the first suggestions,
skeletons of the blossoms that broke out
with purified beauty after the Deluge. That
was the London toy. But this is a kaleidoscope
of Spanish scenes and Spanish people,
painted on glass with the juice of liquorice
root and of orange fruit. Every time I shake
it when I am in the mood, and have taken
my medicinal sherry tonic, by some singular
inner machinery, a hidden spring clicks and
clicks, and a new scene and a new province
meets the introspective eye applied to the
touch-hole. I shake, and they change. How
many slides there are I know not; but this I
know, that I have not yet seen them all.
The old toy may have suggested, as it is
said, new patterns to the feeble imaginations
of carpet weavers and ribbon designers; but
there, mine has suggested to me a whole
volume of travels, think of that, Master
Brooke. I want you to run round the
dark binns of my little diorama kaleidoscope
with me, and look in at the little doorway
every time I shake it. It will show you in
a bright, illuminated coup d'Å“il, all at once,
better than I could describe to you, Spain
with all its varieties, plain, mountain, sea,
and river, the contrasting dress of the
peasantry, and the varieties of hot and cold,
light and dark, temperament and climate.

Now, then, ladies and gentlemen, stand
aside, and don't breathe upon the glasses; walk
up, walk up, we're just going to begin. I
shake the instrument lightly in my right
hand, thus; you hear the glass jingle—there
is no deception, no deception—look in, and
tell me what you see.

FIRST SHAKE.

A REGION of sheep and swine—it is
Estremadura; those silver threads drawn
across its slate and granite rocks, its turfy
sheep walks and aromatic wastes, are the two
great rivers, the Tagus and the Guadiana; in
other countries they would be peopled with
ships, here they serve but as ditches for
draining. Once a land of corn and oil, under
Moor and Roman, Estremadura is now a
sheep walk, desert of grass and thyme. That
man you see under the cork-tree sounding his
horn is a swineherd; that horseman wrapped
in a sheep-skin a smuggler, in winter a wild
duck shooter in the oozy swamps on the
banks of the Guadiana. No fear of robbing
here, the people are too poor, and the
travellers are scarce. That dull city on the
hill above the river yonder, close to the
Portuguese frontier, is Badajoz, where much
English blood, and French, too, was once
shed. That white ring of road winds from
Badajoz to Madrid, and from there to Seville.
Here in that heap of grey ruins, where the
wild fig grows, the frog croaks, and the stork
snaps his bill, is the once famous Roman city
of Merida: and not far off is Medellin, where
Cortes was born. You may know it, though
it is but a speck in the kaleidoscope, by the
castle on the hill and the bridge below.
You can only see, you cannot hear, through
the kaleidoscope; it is no ear trumpet, or
you might hear from the wild olives of the
desert tracks there to the right the perpetual
soft cooing of the Barbary turtle doves, who
dispute the sovereignty of the woods with
the crested hoopoe, the bee-eater and the
blue pie.

Observe the shepherds who pass across our
picture chamber, they wear leather jerkins
open at the arms, and the women short green,
red, and yellow serge petticoats, with cloth
mantillas and silver clasps; there are sandals
on their pretty ballet-dancing feet. They
all wear crosses; and under chestnut-trees
covered with white flowers, or tripping about
at vintage time, look very romantic, pleasant,
and unnatural. But you must not expect
this small kaleidoscope circle, though it does
seem to widen and widen, will show you all