e to fill creditably the
pages of an epistle. I could wish that at the present moment I had more
to write upon, and more interesting details to send you than these which
follow. For two or three weeks after my arrival at Seville I was unable
to accomplish anything, on account of the seizure of the books, with
which you are doubtless acquainted. I however by the assistance of the
Almighty, for which I prayed, was enabled, though not without
considerable trouble, to overcome that difficulty, and to obtain all the
Testaments of which I was in need, to the number of two hundred and
upwards. But still I commenced not operations; indeed I was quite at a
loss, being in a strange place and under very peculiar circumstances, to
imagine the best course to pursue. I therefore waited with perfect
patience until it should please Providence to assist me, and true it is
that help came in rather a remarkable manner.

I was standing in the courtyard of the Reyna _posada_, where for the time
I had taken up my abode, when a man singularly dressed and gigantically
tall entered. My curiosity being excited, I enquired of the master of
the house who he was, when he informed me that he was a foreigner who had
resided a considerable time in Seville, and he believed a Greek. Upon
hearing this I instantly went up to the stranger, and accosted him in the
Greek language in which, though I speak it very ill, I can make myself
understood. He replied in the same idiom, and, flattered by the interest
which I a foreigner expressed for his nation, was not slow in
communicating to me his history. He told me, that his name was
Dionysius; that he was a native of Cephalonia, and had been educated for
the Church, which however not suiting his temper, he had abandoned in
order to follow the profession of the sea, for which he had an early
inclination; that after many adventures and changes of fortune he found
himself one morning on the coast of Spain--a shipwrecked mariner; and
that, ashamed to return to his own country in poverty and distress, he
had remained in the Peninsula, residing chiefly at Seville, where he now
carried on a small trade in books. He said that he was of the Greek
religion, to which he professed strong attachment, and soon discovering
that I was a Protestant, spoke with unbounded abhorrence of the Papal
system, nay of its followers in general, whom he called Latins, and whom
he charged with the ruin of his own country, inasmuch a