The safest plan for those who want to observe, and to book what they observe, is to obtain a Spanish passport, with the object of their curiosity and inquiries clearly specified in it. There is seldom any difficulty at Madrid, if application be made through the English minister, in obtaining such a document; indeed, when the applicant is well known, it is readily given by any of the provincial Captains-General. As it is couched in the Spanish language, it is understood by all, high and low; an advantage which is denied in Spain to those issued by our ambassadors, and even by the Foreign Office, who, to the _credit_ of themselves and nation, give passes to Englishmen in the French language, whereby among Spaniards a suspicion arises that the bearer may be a Frenchman, which is not always pleasant. We preserve among rare Peninsular relics a passport granted by our kind patron the redoubtable Conde de España, and backed by the no less formidable Quesada and Sarsfield, in which it was enjoined, in choice, intelligible Castilian, to all and every minor rulers and governors, whether with the pen or sword, to aid and assist the bearer in his examination of the fine arts and antiquities of the Peninsula. These autocrats were more implicitly obeyed in their respective Lord Lieutenancies than Ferdinand himself; in fact, the pashas of the East are their exact types, each in their district being the heads of both civil and military tribunals; and as they not only administer, but suit the law according to the length of their own feet, they in fact make it and trample upon it, and all in any authority below them imitate their superiors as nearly as they dare. These things of Spain are managed with a gravity truly Oriental, both in the rulers and in the resignation of those ruled by them; these great men’s passport and signature were obeyed by all minor authorities as implicitly as an Oriental firman; the very fact of a stranger having a Captain-General’s passport, is soon known by everybody, and, to use an Oriental phrase, “makes his face to be whitened;” it acts as a letter of introduction, and is in truth the best one of all, since it is addressed to people in power in each village or town, who, true sheikhs, are looked up to by all below them with the same deference, as they themselves look up to all above them. The worth of a person recommended, is estimated by that of the person who recommends; _tal recomendacion tal recomendado_. To complete this thing of Oriental Spain, these three omnipotent despots, who defied laws human and divine, who made dice of their enemies’ bones, and goblets of their skulls, have all since been assassinated, and sent to their account with all their sins on their heads. In limited monarchies ministers who go too far, lose their places, in Spain and Turkey their heads: the former, doubtless, are the most severely punished.