overed a door leading to a subterranean passage or tunnel which
crossed underneath the principal street of the town, and led direct to
the convent of the Capuchines. All the inmates of both establishments
were immediately taken prisoners; a judicial examination followed, when
it was found that for many years the societies of these two convents had
been living in a state of concubinage,--that even the outward doors of
the two houses were seldom shut at night,--that the friars had free
ingress to the convent of the nuns, where both sexes gave themselves up
to the most dissolute abandonment in drunkenness, gluttony, debauchery,
and all sorts of carnal excesses. The authorities found more than they
had expected, and began to repent the course they had taken. The trials,
however, were pushed forward apparently with all usual formalities, but
the judges were exclusively ecclesiastics, and everything was conducted
with profound caution and secrecy. The prisoners were removed to several
towns in Arragon, and kept apart from each other, in different cells; but
in one single night they all disappeared, and were never afterwards heard
of. The only part which the civil authority took in this mysterious
affair was to command the two convents to be pulled down, and salt to be
sown on their foundations,--a ceremony which was accordingly performed,
and one which the laws of Spain then required as to all houses which had
been the scene of any atrocious offence.

It may hardly be necessary to reiterate what we have already more than
once insisted on, as a well authenticated fact, that in the midst of all
such irregularities and crimes as those detailed to show the unnatural
and violent character of celibacy in the clergy, there always have been,
in Spain, a large number of persons of both sexes, who have been
privileged to take up and bear this cross of privation with singular
resignation and constancy. But those efforts on the side of virtue, that
perpetual conflict with sentiments most grateful to the human heart,--and
that separation of an entire class, constituted in society self-acting,
without any relation of endearment towards a general society,--may be
considered as some of the grave inconveniences of Roman Catholicism, or
rather as some of the most formidable obstacles which that faith opposes
to the regular habits and to the peace of families.

The dangers of celibacy in the clergy are perhaps more serious and more
inevit