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for the fruit is suffered to grow rancid before the juice is expressed.

You must perceive that I write at such opportunities as can be caught from my companions, for the room we sit in serves likewise for the bed-chamber. It is now Monday morning. Oh, the misery of the night! I have been so flead, that a painter would find me an excellent subject for the martyrdom of St Bartholomew. Jacob's pillow of stone was a down cushion, compared to that which bruised my head last night; and my bed had all possible varieties of hill and vale, in whose recesses the fleas lay safe; for otherwise I should inevitably have broken their bones by rolling over them. Our apartment is indeed furnished with windows; and he who takes the trouble to examine, may convince himself that they have once been glazed. The night air is very cold, and I have only one solitary blanket; but it is a very pretty one, with red and yellow stripes. Add to this catalogue of comforts, that the cats were saying soft things in most vile Spanish; and you may judge what refreshment I have received from sleep.

"At breakfast they brought us our tea on a plate by way of cannister, and some butter of the country, positively not godown-able. This however was followed by some excellent chocolate, and I soon established a plenum in my system.

'The monuments of Spanish jealousy still remain in the old houses; and the balconies of them are fronted with a lattice more thickly barred, than ever was hencoop in England. But jealousy is out of fashion at present; and they tell me, an almost universal depravity of manners has succeeded. The men are a Jew-looking race; the little boys wear the monkey appendage of a tail, and I see infants with more feathers than a fantastic fine lady would wear at a ball. The women soon appear old, and then every feature settles into symmetry of ugliness. If ever Opie paints another witch, he ought to visit. Corunna. All ideas that you can form by the help of blear eyes, mahogany complexion, and shrivelled parchment, must fall infinitely short of the life.

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"The carts here remind me of the ancient war-chariots, and the men stand in them as they drive. They are drawn by two oxen, and the wheels make a most melancholy and detestable discord. The governor of this town once ordered that they should be kept well oiled to prevent this; but the drivers presented a petition against it, stating, that the oxen liked the sound, and would not draw without it; and therefore the order was revoked.

A low wall is built all along the water-side to prevent smuggling. This town is admirably paved, but its filth is astonishing, when, with so little trouble, it might be kept clean. In order to keep the balconies dry, the water-spouts project very far: there are are no vents left in the wall, and the water and the filth lie in the middle of the streets, till the sun dries, and the winds sweep them. The market-place is very good; and its fountain ornamented with a fine squabfaced figure of Fame. The fountains are well contrived-the spouts are placed so high that no person can either dirt or deface them; and they therefore fill their vessel by the medium of a long tube, shaped like a tobacco pipe.'

After this our author proceeds,--'I am just returned from the Spanish comedy. The theatre is painted with a muddy light blue, and a dirty yellow, without gilding, or any kind of ornament. The boxes are engaged by the season: and subscribers only, with their friends, admitted to them, paying a pesetta each. In the pit are the men, seated as in a great arm'd chair; the lower class stand behind these seats: above are the women; for the sexes are separated, and so strictly, that an officer was broke at Madrid, for intruding into the female places. The boxes, of course, hold family parties. The centre box, over the entrance of the pit, is appointed for the magistrates; covered in the front with red stuff, and ornamented with the royal arms. The motto is a curious one, "Silencio y no fumar.---Silence and no smoaking." The comedy, of course, was very dull to one who could not understand it. I was told that it contained some wit, and more obscenity; but the only comprehensible joke to me, was

"Ah!" said in a loud voice by one man, and "Oh!" replied equally loud by another, to the great amusement of the audience. To this succeeded a comic opera; the characters were represented by the most ill-looking man and woman I ever saw. The man's dress was a thread-bare brown coat lined with silk, that had once been white, and dirty corduroy waistcoat and breeches; his beard was black, and his neckcloth and shoes dirty:--but his face! Jack-ketch might sell the reversion of his fee for him, and be in no danger of defrauding the purchaser. A soldier was the other character, in old black velveret breeches; with a pair of gaiters reaching above the knee, that appeared to have been made out of some blacksmith's old leathern apron. A farce followed, and the hempstretch man again made his appearance; having blacked one of his eyes to look blind, M. observed that he looked better with one eye than with two; and we agreed, that the loss of his head would be an addition to his beauty. The prompter stands in the middle of the stage, about half way above it; before a little tin skreen, not unlike a man in a cheese-toaster. He read the whole play with the actors, in a tone of voice equally loud; and when one of the performers added a little of his own wit, he was so provoked as to abuse him aloud, and shake the book at. him. Another prompter made his appearance to the opera, unshaved, and dirty beyond description: they both used as much action as the actors. The scene that falls between the acts would disgrace a puppet-show at an English fair; on one side is a hill, in size and shape like a sugar-loaf, with a temple on the summit, exactly like a watchbox; on the other Parnassus, with Pegasus striking the top in his flight, and so giving a source to the waters of Helicon: but, such is the proportion of the horse to the mountain, that you would imagine him to be only taking a flying leap over a large ant-hill; and think he would destroy the whole economy of the state, by kicking it to pieces. Between the hills lay a city and in the air sits a duck-legged Minerva, surrounded by flabby Cupids. I could see the hair-dressing behind the scenes: a child was suffered to play on the stage, and amuse himself by sitting on the scene, and swinging backward and

have been a vain attempt, and to have sought another from below, would have delayed our return till midnight. In this perplexity, one of our Grison guides, who had rambled a few paces in search of the animal, returned with his arms full of shrubs, which he placed in two leathern girdles fastened to the long poles that are the walking sticks of the glaciers, and tied them together, so as to form a sort of chair, or litter; on this I placed myself, not without some apprehension, but was carried in perfect safety down to the cottage where we had breakfasted in the morning, and where we found our mule, who had been caught marching homewards early in the evening, and detained by the cottagers till our return.'

Miss Williams next visited the source of the Rhine, and various other parts of Switzerland, after which, a milder government having been established in France, she returned to Paris, where says she, I had only scenes of gratulation to witness, and only tears of luxury to shed!'

LETTERS

FROM

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL,

BY

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

SPAIN and Portugal, from being lately the seat of war, and the object of contest, have excited the curiosity of all classes, respecting their political, civil, and religious institutions. Some parts of these subjects have been ably illustrated by several learn. ed travellers, and some amusing sketches relative to the same points, have been published by British officers who served in the peninsular war; but none have excelled the writer of these letters in accuracy of description, and liveliness of narration. It is scarcely necessary to remark, that they are the productions of Mr. Robert Southey, the celebrated poet, now known as Robert Southey, esquire, poet-laureat.

Mr. Southey arrived at Corunna, on Sunday Dec. 13th 1795, when he exclaims, 'Oh the luxury of arriving at Tartarus, if the river Styx be as broad and as rough as the bay of Biscay, and Charon's boat accommodated like the Spanish packet of Senor Don Raimundo Aruspini! When I first went on board, the mate was employed in cutting a cross upon the side of his birth, and the sailors were feasting upon a mess of biscuit, onions, liver, aud horse beans, boiled into a brown pap, which they were all pawing out of a bucket. The same taste and cleanliness of cookery were displayed in the

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