running in the provinces. Some of the bishops and the superior clergy
have had the folly to denounce the play and to forbid their
congregations to witness or to read it. There is not an objectionable
word or idea in it from first to last, except such as may be
disagreeable to the Church--as that women should be educated so as to be
the intellectual companions of their husbands, and should not be
entrapped into convents by foul means and against their will. The action
taken by the clergy in this matter has not only largely advertised the
play, but has led to angry demonstrations against them, and has
strengthened the temper of the people to resist all clerical domination
in temporal matters.

There have not been wanting from time to time signs, especially in the
large manufacturing towns, of a spirit of revolt against all religion.
Socialism, atheism, and even anarchism are all in the air, and if these
are to be counteracted by religious teaching at all, it will certainly
not be by the narrow dogmatism of the old school. There is a deep fund
of religious feeling in the Spanish character which it would take a
great deal to uproot, but it must be a wide-spirited and enlightened
faith which will retain its hold over the people, who are everywhere
breaking their old bonds and thinking for themselves.

CHAPTER XIV

PHILANTHROPY--POSITION OF WOMEN--MARRIAGE CUSTOMS

Travellers complain somewhat bitterly of the increase in the numbers and
the importunity of beggars in Spain; but wherever monks abound, beggars
also abound, and the long-unaccustomed sight of the various religious
habits naturally brings with it the hordes of miserable objects who
afford opportunities for the faithful to exercise what they are taught
to believe is charity--loved of God. This, however, is more especially
the case in Granada, or those favoured spots affected by the rich
tourist, who has not always the same opinion about indiscriminate
charity as the native Spaniard. In old days, the wise policy of Charles
III. had reduced very greatly the swarm of beggars. A certain number of
terrible-looking objects--the fortunate possessors of withered limbs,
sightless eyeballs, or other disqualifications for honest work--still
ostentatiously displayed their badges of professional mendicancy, and
lived, apparently quite comfortably, on the alms of the passers-by. But
the enormous competition which has since sprung up in this "career"
must interfere a