The numerous charitable institutions in the capital, and throughout the island, are well managed, and generally clean. The Casa de Beneficencia, founded by the famous Las Casas, as an asylum for the extremes of life, the very young and very old, is especially interesting. It is managed by those admirable women, the Little Sisters of the Poor. Nothing can exceed the exquisite cleanliness of the Lazar House, situated at some distance from the city, in which six nuns and two priests have banished themselves from the world in order to tend the many hapless lepers on the island. But admirably managed, roomy, and well endowed though they undoubtedly are, the charitable establishments of Havana do not supply the demand, for the place swarms with beggars, especially in these recent hard times. Never, no, not even in Spain or Italy, have I seen such terrible beggars as those of Cuba. They haunt you everywhere, gathering round the church doors, whining for alms, insulting you if you refuse them, and pestering you as you go home at night, never leaving you till you either bestow money on them, or escape within your own or some friendly door. Kingsley described Havana as "the Western Abomination," so low was his opinion of the moral tone of its inhabitants. Whether his judgment was right or wrong, I dare not say, but I know enough to convince me that the average Havanese drawing-room can provide quite as much ill-natured gossip as any in London. Here, as elsewhere in Southern America, religion has become a mere affair of ceremony and outward observance, with little or no moral influence. I am assured that of late years there has been a considerable reaction, and that numerous missions have been preached by priests and friars, imported from Europe in the hope of exciting the zeal of the native clergy, which has very possibly been affected by the enervating influence of the climate. Be this as it may, the churches in Cuba are a never-failing source of interest, by reason of the quaint and everchanging scenes their interiors exhibit. In some of them the music is admirable in its way, although entirely of an operatic character. At the Merced there is a full orchestra, and the principal singers from the opera may often be heard at High Mass.