TAILOR'S DRAWER. Nedyls, threde, thymbell, shers, and all suche knackes. THE FOUR P's. I. A TAILOR's drawer, quotha? Yes; a tailor's drawer. Sooth to say, it is rather a quaint rubric for a chapter in the pilgrim's breviary; albeit it well befits the motley character of the following pages. It is a title which the Spaniards give to a desultory discourse, wherein various and discordant themes are touched upon, and which is crammed full of little shreds and patches of erudition; and certainly it is not inappropriate to a chapter whose contents are of every shape and hue, and "do no more adhere and keep pace together than the hundredth psalm to the tune of Green Sleeves." II. It is recorded in the Adventures of Gil Blas de Santillana, that when this renowned personage first visited the city of Madrid, he took lodgings at the house of Mateo Melandez, in the Puerta del Sol. In choosing a place of abode in the Spanish court, I followed, as far as practicable, this illustrious example; but, as the kind-hearted Mateo had been long gathered to his fathers, I was content to take up my residence in the hired house of Valentin Gonzalez, at the foot of the Calle de la Montera. My apartments were in the third story, above the dust, though not beyond the rattle, of the street; and my balconies looked down into the Puerta del Sol, the heart of Madrid, through which circulates the living current of its population at least once every twenty-four hours. The Puerta del Sol is a public square, from which diverge the five principal streets of the metropolis. It is the great rendezvous of grave and gay-of priest and layman—of gentle and simple-the mart of business and of gossip the place where the creditor seeks his debtor, where the lawyer seeks his client, where the stranger seeks amusement, where the friend seeks his friend, and |