hing but a
kind motive could have induced them to take this trouble; so I yielded
with a good grace, and thanked the cabinet council for their timely
warning, though fearing that, in this land of procrastination, it would
be difficult to procure another dress for the fancy ball.

[Illustration: ECCLESIASTICAL COSTUMES.]

"They had scarcely gone, when Senor ---- brought a message from several
of the principal ladies here, whom we do not even know, and who had
requested that, as a stranger, I should be informed of the reasons
which rendered the Poblana dress objectionable in this country,
especially on any public occasion like this ball. I was really thankful
for my escape.

"Just as I was dressing for dinner, a note was brought, marked
_reservada_ (private), the contents of which appeared to me more odd
than pleasant. I have since heard, however, that the writer, Don Jose
Arnaiz, is an old man, and a sort of privileged character, who
interferes in every thing, whether it concerns him or not. I translate
it for your benefit:

"The dress of a Poblana is that of a woman of no character. The lady of
the Spanish minister is a _lady_ in every sense of the word. However
much she may have compromised herself, she ought neither to go as a
Poblana, nor in any other character but her own. So says to the Senor
de C----n, Jose Arnaiz, who esteems him as much as possible."

If priests were angels, the town would be rightly named, for it is a
city of priests and _religious_ men who have consecrated their lives
to begging, and count it a merit with God to live on charity. Convents
of male and female _religious_ abound, and, as the books tell us,
$40,000,000, in the form of mortgages upon the fairest lands of the
Vega of Puebla, is consecrated to their support, under the supervision
of the bishop. That smoking mountain, that outlet to infernal fires, is
so lose at hand as to suggest the idea that this whole mass of impurity
and moral rottenness may have been vomited up from the bottomless pit,
or that the fallen angels, in their way thitherward, tarried here to
found a sacred city, see its Cathedral finished, and then led the way
down the inclined plane to that brimstone convent where friars "most do
congregate."

MARIANNA IN BRONZE.

In this city of dirty houses and dirty faces there is, nevertheless,
some public spirit. Since I was last here a bronze equestrian statue
has been set up in the Grand Plaza. It is a bronze woman,