"To see these Mysteries in their glory," continued my friend, "you should go into the small towns in the provinces, uncontaminated with railroads or unbelief. There they last several days The stage is the town, the Temple scene takes place in the church, the Judgment at the city hall, and the procession of the Via Crucis moves through all the principal streets. The leading roles are no joke,--carrying fifty kilos of wood over the mud and cobble-stones for half a day. The Judas or Gestas must be paid double for the kicks and cuffs he gets from tender-hearted spectators,--the curses he accepts willingly as a tribute to his dramatic ability. His proudest boast in the evening is Querian matarme,--'They wanted to kill me!' I once saw the hero of the drama stop before a wine-shop, sweating like rain, and positively swear by the life of the Devil, he would not carry his gallows a step farther unless he had a drink. They brought him a bottle of Valdepenas, and he drained it before resuming his way to Golgotha. Some of us laughed thoughtlessly, and narrowly escaped the knives of the orthodox ruffians who followed the procession." The most striking fact in this species of exhibition is the evident and unquestioning faith of the audience. To all foreigners the show is at first shocking and then tedious; to the good people of Madrid it is a sermon, full of absolute truth and vivid reality. The class of persons who attend these spectacles is very different from that which you find at the Royal Theatre or the Comic Opera. They are sober, serious bourgeois, who mind their shops and go to mass regularly, and who come to the theatre only in Lent, when the gay world stays away. They would not dream of such an indiscretion as reading the Bible. Their doctrinal education consists of their catechism, the sermons of the curas, and the traditions of the Church. The miracle of St. Veronica, who, wiping the brow of the Saviour in the Street of Bitterness, finds his portrait on her handkerchief, is to them as real and reverend as if it were related by the evangelist. The spirit of inquiry which has broken so many idols, and opened such new vistas of thought for the minds of all the world, is as yet a stranger to Spain. It is the blind and fatal boast of even the best of Spaniards that their country is a unit in religious faith. Nunca se disputo en Espana,--"There has never been any discussion in Spain,"--exclaims proudly an eminent Spanish writer. Spectacles like that which we have just seen were one of the elements which in a barbarous and unenlightened age contributed strongly to the consolidation of that unthinking and ardent faith which has fused the nation into one torpid and homogeneous mass of superstition. No better means could have been devised for the purpose. Leaving out of view the sublime teachings of the large and tolerant morality of Jesus, the clergy made his personality the sole object of worship and reverence. By