s II., and his Court and the howling rabble of Madrid looked
on with savage enjoyment. Nothing can ever obliterate the impression of
that scene, nor make one forget the deadly clinging of those ghastly
black ashes, which the wind scattered about, and which it was impossible
to escape or to get rid of. The fell work of the "religious" authors of
the holocaust had been well done--nothing was left but ashes; and the
next day, by order of the Government, sand or soil had been thrown over
all that could bear witness to this horrible episode in the history of
the Church in Spain, while the people who inhabit the houses built over
the spot probably know nothing of the records of human agony and brutal
bigotry that still lie beneath their homes.

We hear of these things and read of them in history, but one needs to
have seen that awful memorial to realise what share the Inquisition has
had in transforming a naturally heroic and kindly people into the inert
masses which nothing, or almost nothing, would move so long as they had
_pan y toros_ (bread and bulls). Thanks to the horrors of the
Inquisition and the _Autos-da-fe_, the whole people have acquired a
character which assuredly they do not deserve. The blind bigotry and
cynical cruelty of Philip II. and his lunatic successors have been
identified with the races over which, unfortunately for Spain, they
ruled for so many years. When one remembers that this is the view taken
of the Inquisition, and of the domination of the Church in effacing all
kinds of culture, by the liberal and educated Spaniard of to-day, and
that there is, even now, an extreme party which would fain see the "Holy
Office" re-established, with all its old powers, it is easy to
understand at what a critical point the clerical question has arrived in
Spain; nor need one wonder at the feeling which in all parts of the
kingdom has been aroused by the recrudescence of the religious orders,
more especially of the determined struggle of the Jesuits to retain and
even to reassert their power.

The Madonna, who is always spoken of as "La Virgen," never as "Santa
Maria," is the great object of love and of reverence in Spain, while the
words _Dios_ and _Jesus_ are used as common exclamations in a way that
impresses English people rather unfavourably. It is a shock to hear all
classes using the _Por Dios!_ which with us is a mark of the purest
blackguardism, and the use as common names of that of Our Lord and of
_Salv