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confinement, and to wear a yellow cap. The whole court of Spain was
present on this occasion. The grand inquisitor's chair was placed in a
sort of tribunal far above that of the king.

Among those who were to suffer, was a young Jewess of exquisite beauty,
and but seventeen years of age. Being on the same side of the scaffold
where the queen was seated, she addressed her, in hopes of obtaining a
pardon, in the following pathetic speech: "Great queen, will not your
royal presence be of some service to the in my miserable condition! Have
regard to my youth; and, oh! consider, that I am about to die for
professing a religion imbibed from my earliest infancy!" Her majesty
seemed greatly to pity her distress, but turned away her eyes, as she
did not dare to speak a word in behalf of a person who had been declared
a heretic.

Now mass began, in the midst of which the priest came from the altar,
placed himself near the scaffold, and seated himself in a chair prepared
for that purpose.

The chief inquisitor then descended from the amphitheatre, dressed in
his cope, and having a mitre on his head. After having bowed to the
altar, he advanced towards the king's balcony, and went up to it,
attended by some of his officers, carrying a cross and the gospels, with
a book containing the oath by which the kings of Spain oblige themselves
to protect the catholic faith, to extirpate heretics, and to support
with all their power and force the prosecutions and decrees of the
inquisition: a like oath was administered to the counsellors and whole
assembly. The mass was begun about twelve at noon, and did not end till
nine in the evening, being protracted by a proclamation of the sentences
of the several criminals, which were already separately rehearsed aloud
one after the other.

After this, followed the burning of the twenty-one men and women, whose
intrepidity in suffering that horrid death was truly astonishing. The
king's near situation to the criminals rendered their dying groans very
audible to him; he could not, however, be absent from this dreadful
scene, as it is esteemed a religious one; and his coronation oath
obliges him to give a sanction by his presence to all the acts of the
tribunal.

What we have already said may be applied to inquisitions in general, as
well as to that of Spain in particular. The inquisition belonging to
Portugal is exactly upon a similar plan to that of Spain, having been
instituted much about th