One instance in our time amused all the tertulias of Seville, who maliciously attributed the sudden relief which a fair high-born unmarried invalid experienced from an apparent dropsical complaint to causes not altogether supernatural; _Pues, Don Ricardo_, “and so, Master Richard,” would her friends of the same age and rank often say, “you are a stranger; go and ask dearest _Esperanza_ why she wears the Virgin of Carmel; come back and let us know her story, and we will tell you the real truth.” _Vaya! vaya! Don Ricardo, usted es muy majadero_,--“Go to, Master Richard, your Grace is an immense bore,” replied the penitent, if she suspected the authors and motive of the embassy. The pious in antiquity raised temples to Minerva medica or Esculapius, as Spaniards do altars to _Na. Señora de los Remedios_, our Lady of the Remedies, and to San Roque, whose intervention renders “sound as a roach,” a proverb devised in his honour by our ancestors, who, before the Reformation, trusted likewise to him; and both thought, if Cicero is to be credited, that these tutelars did _at least_ as much as the doctor. Alas! for the patient credulity of mankind, which still gulps down such medicinal quackery as all this, and which long will continue to do so even were one of the dead to rise from the grave, to deprecate the absurd treatment by which he and so many have been sacrificed. However, by way of compensation, the saving the _soul_ has been made just as primary a consideration in Spain as the curing the _body_ has been in England. These relics, charms, and amulets represent our patent medicines; and the wonder is how any one in Great Britain can be condemned to death in this world, or how any one in the Peninsula can be doomed to perdition in the next: possibly the panaceas are in neither case quite specific. Be that as it may, how numerous and well-appointed are the churches and convents there, compared to the hospitals; how amply provided the relic-magazine with bones and spells, when compared to the anatomical museums and chemists’ shops; again, what a flock of holy practitioners come forth _after_ a Spaniard has been stabbed, starved, or executed, not one of whom would have stirred a step to save an army of his countrymen when alive; and what coppers are now collected to pay masses to get his soul out of purgatory! [Sidenote: PHILOSOPHY OF RELICS.] Beware, nevertheless, gentle Protestant reader, of dying in Spain, except in Cadiz or Malaga, where, if you are curious in Christian burial, there is snug lying for heretics; and for your life avoid being even sick at Madrid, since if once handed over to the faculty make thy last testament forthwith, as, if the judgment passed on their own doctors by Spaniards be true, Esculapius cannot save thee from the crows: avoid the Spanish doctors therefore like mad dogs, and throw their physic after them.