The churches here exhibit some curious specimens of Moorish architecture: but, as this is a fortified town, it is not safe to be seen with a pencil! A poor emigrant priest last year, walking just without the town gates, turned round to look at the prospect. He was observed, taken up on suspicion of a design to take plans of the fortifications, and actually sent away!

I had a delightful walk this morning with the consul, among the rude scenery of Galicia:--little green lanes, between stony banks, and wild and rocky mountains; and, although I saw neither meadows, or hedges, or trees, I was too much occupied with the new and the sublime, to regret the beautiful. There were four stone crosses in one of the lanes. I had heard of these monuments of murder, and therefore suspected what they were. Yet I felt a sudden gloom, at reading upon one of them, "Here died Lorenzo, of Betanzos." "We waited on the general of Galicia, to produce our passports, and obtain permission to travel with arms; for, without permission, no man is in this country allowed to carry the means of self-defence. I expected dignity and hauter in a Spanish grandee, but found neither the one nor the other. His palace is a paltry place; and the portraits of the king and queen in his state-room, would be thought indifferent signposts in England.

'One peculiarity of this country is, that in good houses no person inhabits the ground floor. A warehouse, a shop, or more generally a stable, is under every private dwelling-house. The consul's apartments are on the attic story; and when you ring the bell, the door is opened by a long string from above; like the "Open Sesame," in the Arabian Tales. We sat round a brazier, filled with wood embers; and occasionally revived the fire by a fan, made of thin chips; while one of the company played on the guitar; an instrument less disagreeable than most others to one who is no lover of music; because it is not loud enough to force his attention, when he is not disposed to give it.

'Thursday night.] About two o'clock this afternoon, we left Corunna in a coach and six. As we sit in the carriage,

our eyes are above the windows; which must, of course, be admirably adapted for seeing the country. Our six mules are harnessed only with ropes: the leaders and the middle pair are without reins; and the nearest reined only with ropes. The two muleteers, or more properly, the mayoral and zagal, either ride on a low kind of box, or walk. The mules know their names and obey the voice of their driver with astonishing docility: their heads are most gaily bedizened with tufts and hanging strings of blue, yellow, and purple worsted: each mule has sixteen bells; so that we travel more musically, and almost as fast, as a flying waggon. There are four reasons why these bells should be worn; two English reasons and two Spanish ones they may be necessary in a dark night; and, where the roads are narrow, they give timely warning to other travellers: these are the English reasons. The Spaniards' motives for using them are, that the mules like the music; and that, as all the bells are marked with a crucifix, the devil cannot come within hearing of the consecrated peal."

Our author walked to Betanzos where he took up his abode for the night. We are going,' says he, to sup on our English beef. They have brought us a vinegar vessel, about the size of a porter pot; excellently contrived for these two reasons; on account of the narrowness of its neck, it is impossible ever to clean it; and being of lead, it makes the vinegar sweet, and of course poisonous !

'On entering the room, we desired the boy to remove a vessel that did not scent it agreeably. So little idea had he that it was offensive, that he removed it from under the bed, only to place it in the closet!

"Friday evening.] At midnight we heard the arrival of a post from Madrid, who awoke the people of the house by cracking his whip. I cannot say he awoke me, for I, like Polonius, was at supper, not where I eat, but where I was eaten. The ingenious gentleman who communicated his discovery to the public, in the Encyclopædia, that ninety millions of mites eggs, amount exactly to the size of one pigeon's egg, may if he please, calculate what quantity of blood was extracted from my body in the course of seven hours; the bed

being six feet two and a half, by four feet five, and as populous as possible in that given space.'

At Lugo our author has these reflections.

Whatever may

be the state of the human mind, the human body has certainly degenerated. We should sink under the weight of the armour our ancestors fought in, and out of one of their large and lofty rooms, I have seen a suite of apartments even spacious for their pigmy descendants. The "sons of little men," have taken possession of the world! I find no chair that has been made since the Restoration high enough for an evening nap; when I sit down to dinner, nine times out of ten I hurt my knees against the table; and I am obliged to contract myself, like one of the long victims of Procrustes, in almost every bed I sleep in ! Such were the melancholy reflections of a tall man in a short bed.

The Spanish women,' he observes, are certainly great admirers of muslin. They were very earnest here with M. to sell his neckloth. Buy, however, they could not, to beg they were ashamed, and so the next morning they stole my uncle's. Josepha took hold of my hair, asked me how I wore it in England, and advised me never to tie it or wear powder. I tell you this for two reasons, as an example that such whose tastes are not vitiated, dislike the absurd custom of plastering the head with grease, and then covering it with dust; and to shew you the familiar manners of the people. Before an English chamber-maid could have done this, she must have attained a degree of boldness, which would probably have been the effect of depravity: but in that country the familiarity of ignorant innocence can hardly escape the insults of pride or of licentiousness.

The inhabitants of this peninsula are far advanced towards that period when all created beings shall fraternize. The muleteer sleeps by the side of his mule---the brotherly love of Sancho and Dapple may be seen in every hovel; and the horses, and the cows, and the cats, and the dogs, and the poultry, and the people, and the pigs, all inhabit the same apartment, not to mention three certain tribes of insects, for preserving of whom all travellers in Spain are but little obliged to Noah. The houses here are exactly like the representations

I have seen of the huts in Kamschatka. The thatch reaches to the ground, and there is a hole left in it which serves for the inhabitants to go in and the smoke to go out. The thatch is blackened with smoke and consequently no moss can grow there. The mountains in this part of Spain are in parts cultivated even to their summits; at this season there is plenty of water, and there are trenches cut in the cultivated lands to preserve it. Oaks, alders, poplars, and chesnut trees, are numerous in the valleys; and we saw the first vineyards. A lovely country, a paradise of nature: but the inhabitants are kept in ignorance and poverty, by the double despotism of their church and state! I saw a woman carrying a heavy burthen of wood on her head, which she had cut herself, and spinning as she walked along; a melancholy picture of industrious wretchedness.

'Three people passed us with wens, and I puzzled myself in vainly attempting to account for the connection between wens and mountains. I saw a calf walk into one of the houses, pushing by a woman at the door with a coolness that marked him for one of the family. The bee-hives here are made of part of the trunk of a tree hollowed, about three feet high, and covered with a slate. All the Spanish houses are without that little appendage which in England we think a necessary. An Englishman told me, that going behind a posada by moonlight, he saw one of these hollow pieces of wood covered with a slate, and congratulated himself that the people there were so far advanced as to have made such a convenience. Travellers of old, when they prepared for a journey, girded up their loins: he did the reverse, and was in a situation very unfit for making a speedy retreat when he took off the cover, and out came the bees upon him.

'We are now at Villa Franca. Never did I see a town so beautiful as we approached: but when we entered,---Oh the elegant cleanliness of Drury Lane! There is an old palace opposite the posada, of the duke of Alva, old and ruinous, and mean and melancholy as a parish workhouse in England. I stood for some time at the balcony, gazing at this place, where the most celebrated and most detestable of its possessors may perhaps have listened to the songs of Lope de Vega, per

haps have meditated massacres in Holland. The mournful degradation of the Dutch, as well as of the Spanish character, forcibly occured to me, and I looked on with--I trust the prophetic eye of Hope, to the promised Brotherhood of Mankind, when Oppression and commerce shall no longer render them miserable by making them vicious.

Wednesday, Dec. 23.] A young barber of Oviedo, travelling to Madrid to seek his fortune, has joined our party, and a very valuable acquisition he is. He waits on us, markets for us, assists us in cooking, shaves, bleeds, draws teeth, understands my Spanish, and has moreover one of the best physiognomies in Spain.

At Ponferrada we found the posada pre-occupied by a marquis and his retinue. A pleasant incident, for the axle-tree was damaged, and to proceed of course impossible Luckily the marquis departed, and here we are still detained.--Opposite to our balcony is the house of some hidalgo, with whom five ladies are just arrived to dine in an open cart, drawn by oxen. They wear their hair combed straight, parted on the forehead, and tied loosely in the middle behind.

'Day and night are we annoyed by the incessant noise of the mules; by night they are under us---we are only separated from the stable by planks laid across the beams,

"And sounds and stinks come mingled from below."

By day the mayoral is continually calling out to his mules: he gallops over the two first syllables of their name, and dwells upon the two last with a sound as slow and as wearying as the motion of his own carriage. 66 Aquileia--Capitana---Gallega -malditas mulas!" Then he consigns them to three hundred devils, the exact number they always swear by; calls them thieves, pick-pockets, and concludes the climax of vituperation by "alma de muerda," which is, being interpreted, the soul of what the Laputan philosopher could never transmute again into bread and cheese. Sometimes he beats them furiously, and frequently flings a great stone at their heads.

Thursday, Dec. 24.] We left Ponferrada this morning, and our newly mended axle-tree-lasted us almost three miles. VOL. IV. 20