of Valencia crying aloud that Christ was nigh at hand and would
appear in a short time; whilst advertisements to much the same effect
were busily circulated in which the name, the noble name, of the Bible
Society was prostituted; whilst the Bible exposed for sale in an
apartment of a public house served for little more than a decoy to the
idle and curious, who were there treated with incoherent railings against
the Church of Rome and Babylon, in a dialect which it was well for the
deliverer that only a few of the audience understood. But I fly from
these details, and will now repeat the consequences of the above
proceedings to myself; for I, I, and only I, as every respectable person
in Madrid can vouch, have paid the penalty for them all, though as
innocent as the babe who has not yet seen the light.

I had much difficulty at Madrid, principally on account of the state of
political matters which absorbed the minds of all, in bringing the New
Testament into notice. However by dint of perseverance I contrived to
direct the public curiosity towards it, indeed I was beginning to average
a sale of twenty copies daily, when the shop was suddenly closed by order
of the Government in consequence of the complaints from Valencia, myself
being supposed to be the instigator and director of the scenes in that
place already narrated. For the next four months I carried on
negotiations with the Government through the medium of Sir George
Villiers, who from my first arrival in the Peninsula, had most generously
befriended me. But in his endeavours to forward my views he found
exceeding difficulties. The clergy were by this time, both Carlist and
liberal, thoroughly incensed against me, and indeed with much apparent
reason; the former denounced me to the populace as a sorcerer and a
heretic, and the latter spoke of me as an accomplished hypocrite. I was
at last flung into prison--into the pestilential _Carcel de la Corte_,
where my faithful servant Francisco caught the gaol-fever, of which he
subsequently died. But in this instance my enemies committed a very
imprudent act, an act which had very nearly produced the result for which
I had been so long unsuccessfully negotiating. My protector, Sir George
Villiers, informed the Spanish Prime Minister, Ofalia, that unless full
satisfaction was offered me, he should deem it his duty to cease any
further transactions with the Spanish Government, and to order all the
British land and s