d body of the Alcalde was found in a street
adjoining that in which he resided.

LETTER XXII.

INQUISITION. COLLEGE OF SAN TELMO. CIGAR MANUFACTORY. BULL CIRCUS.
EXCHANGE. AYUNTAMIENTO.

Seville.

In the faubourg of Triana, separated from the town by the river, may be
distinguished remains of the ancient castle, which became the
headquarters of the Inquisition, on its first creation, in 1482. That
body was, however, shortly afterwards, compelled to evacuate the
building, by a great inundation of the Guadalquivir, which occurred in
the year 1626. It then moved into the town, and, from that period to the
close of its functions, occupied an edifice situated in the parish of
Saint Mark. Its jurisdiction did not extend beyond Andalucia. The entire
body was composed of the following official persons:--three inquisitors,
a judge of the fisc, a chief Alguazil, a receiver, (of fines,) five
secretaries, ten counsellors, eighty qualifiers, one advocate of the
fisc, one alcayde of the prison, one messenger, ten honest persons, two
surgeons, and one porter. For the City of Seville, one hundred
familiars: for the entire district, the commissaries, notaries, and
familiars, amounted to four thousand. The ten honest persons cut but a
sorry figure in so long a list. Do they not tempt you to parody Prince
Hal's exclamation "Monstrous! but one halfpenny-worth of bread to this
intolerable deal of sack?"

The Inquisition of Seville is of an earlier date than that of Toledo,
and was the first established in Spain. It was likewise the most
distinguished by the rigour of its sentences. The actual horrors of the
inquisitorial vaults were, I imagine, in general much exaggerated. A few
instances of severity, accompanied by a mystery, skilfully designed to
magnify its effect, was sufficient to set on fire the inflammable
imaginations of these sunny regions, and to spread universal terror. It
was on finding these means insufficient for the extirpation of religious
dissent, that, at length, executions were decreed by wholesale. Rather
than give credit to the voluminous list of the secret cruelties, which
were supposed by many to be exercised by the midnight tribunals, and
which could have no adequate object, since a conversion brought about by
such means could not, when known, profit the cause. I think it probable
that all acts of severity were made as public as possible, in order to
employ the terror they inspired as a means of swellin