None but the simple are deceived by the gentle Irving when he insinuates "she is even somewhat bigoted;" by which expression he would have us understand that the fascinating queen of Castile was but little of a bigot. Again: "Ferdinand was a religious bigot; and the devotion of Isabella went as near to bigotry as her liberal mind and magnanimous spirit would permit"—that is to say, as the plan of Mr Irving's story would permit. Quite as well as any of us Irving knew that Isabella was one of the most bigoted women of her bigoted age, far more bigoted than Ferdinand, who dared even dispute the pope when his Holiness interfered too far in attempting to thwart his ambitious plans. She was, indeed, so deeply dyed a bigot as to allow her ghostly confessor to overawe her finest womanly instincts, her commonly strict sense of honor, justice, and humanity, and cause her to permit in Spain the horrible Inquisition, the most monstrous mechanism of torture ever invented in aid of the most monstrous crime ever perpetrated by man upon his fellows, the coercion and suppression of opinion. Fair as she was in all her ways, and charming—fair of heart and mind and complexion, with regular features, light chestnut hair, mild blue eyes, a modest and gracious demeanor—she did not scruple, for the extermination of heresy, to apply to such of her loving subjects as dared think for themselves the thumb-screw, the ring-bolt and pulley, the rack, the rolling-bench, the punch, the skewer, the pincers, the knotted whip, the sharp-toothed iron collar, chains, balls, and manacles, confiscation of property and burning at the stake; and all under false accusations and distorted evidence. She did not hesitate to seize and put to death hundreds of wealthy men like Pecho, and appropriate to her own use their money, though her exquisite womanly sensibilities might sometimes prompt her to fling to the widows and children whom she had turned beggars into the street a few crumbs of their former riches. This mother, who nursed children of her own and who should not have been wholly ignorant of a mother's love, turned a deaf ear to the cries of Moorish mothers as they and their children were torn asunder and sold at the slave mart in Seville. Thousands of innocent men, women, and children she cruelly imprisoned, thousands she cast into the fiery furnace, tens of thousands she robbed and then drove into exile; but it was chastely done, and by a most sweet and beautiful lady. We can hardly believe it true, we do not like to believe it true, that when old Rabbi Abarbanel pleaded before the king for his people, "I will pay for their ransom six hundred thousand crowns of gold," Isabella's soft, musical voice was heard to say, "Do not take it," her confessor meanwhile exclaiming "What! Judas-like, sell Jesus!" Besides, thrice six hundred thousand crowns might be secured by not accepting the ransom. And yet this was the bright being, and such her acts by