good deal with its lucrativeness.

There is no poor law as yet in Spain. Philanthropy is left to voluntary
effort; but the list of charities is so great, and so widely spread over
the whole country, that one would think wholesale beggary would be
superfluous. Madrid is divided into thirty-three parishes, each having a
board of _Beneficencias_, the Government holding a fund which these
boards administer. The Queen is the President of the whole. Each board
has its president and vice-president--generally ladies of the
aristocracy--a treasurer, vice-treasurer, secretary, and vice-secretary,
and a body of visitors; accounts are rendered monthly to the governing
board, whose vice-president presides in the name of the Queen. There are
also the confraternities of St. Vincent and St. Paul, the members of
which are gentlemen and ladies who work independently of each other.
These, however, have no established funds, but depend on voluntary
subscriptions and gifts. Both these associations visit the poor in their
own homes. The Pardo and the San Bernadino are societies and homes for
benefiting men, women, and children; they have been founded by ladies.
For boys there is the School of the Sacred Heart, and the Christian
Brothers. The School of San Ildefonso belongs to the _Ayuntamiento_, and
has secular masters. There is a small asylum, with chaplaincy attached,
for architects. Santa Rita is a reformatory for boys in Carabanchel,
under a religious brotherhood. For girls there is the Horfino, the
Mercedes Asylum--founded in memory of and kept up by the rents of Queen
Mercedes--Santa Isabel and San Ildefonso, the French St. Vincent de
Paul, San Blas, on the same lines as the Mercedes, Santa Cruz, the
Inclusa, and the Spanish Vincent de Paul. For fallen girls there are the
Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament, the Ladies of the Holy Trinity, and
the Oblates of the Holy Redeemer.

In all parts of the country branches of these or similar institutions
abound. None are more liberal to the funds of these voluntary charities
than the bull-fighters, who, if they make large fortunes, never forget
the class from which they sprang, and are most generous in their
donations. When occasion demands an extra effort, a _fiesta_ is given at
the Plaza de Toros, and the whole of the profits go to the charity for
which it has been held. No doubt these schemes have their faults in
operation, and Galdos in some of his popular novels does not fail to
hold up--n