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Since despotism has been replaced by constitutional rule the divinity that doth hedge a King has shed something of its significance, but the staunchest republican will admit that there is at least a certain picturesqueness about royalty; and the interest attaching to a crowned head naturally extends to the ancestral homes of majesty. Spain is unusually rich in ‘cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces,’ many of which have been the scenes of stirring and momentous events in her history. On the gloomy pile of the Escorial—worthier of an Egyptian Pharaoh—Philip II. stamped conspicuously and indelibly his own sombre personality; Aranjuez and La Granja reveal to us monarchy in its lighter aspect; the Alcazar reminds us of the days when Castilian royalty aped the pomp of the Saracen and became itself half-Oriental; the Royal Palace of Madrid epitomises the greatest crisis in the nation’s history, of the expulsion of its legitimate sovereign, and of the usurpation of the eldest Buonaparte. Napoleon himself ascended its grand staircase, and looking round at the splendid home of the Spanish Bourbons, he was able to say to his brother, ‘I hold at last this Spain so much desired!’

These palaces of the haughtiest royal race in Europe are endowed with the rarest treasures of art and taste such as only a semi-despotic Power could accumulate in bygone days. It is the object of this little book to reveal these riches to the curious in such matters by means of illustrations, the accompanying text being only to be considered in the light of explanatory notes and chronological data.

A. F. C.