[391] One of the most odious of the acts that marked the restoration of Ferdinand VII. related to the war of the _Comuneros_, nearly three centuries before. After the execution of Juan de Padilla and the exile of his noble wife, in 1521, their house was razed to the ground, and an inscription reproachful to their memory placed on the spot where it had stood. This the Cortes removed, and erected in its stead a simple monument in honor of the martyrs. In 1823, Ferdinand ordered the simple monument of the Cortes to be destroyed, and replaced the old inscription! But, since that time, Martinez de la Rosa has erected a nobler monument to their memory in his “Viuda de Padilla.” See Henri Ternaux, Les Comuneros, Paris, 1834, 8vo, p. 208; an interesting work and a work of authority, relying, in part, on unpublished materials. [392] Llorente, Hist. de l’Inquisition, Tom. IV. pp. 145-154. Southey’s History of the Peninsular War, London, 1823, 4to, Tom. I. The Inquisition was again abolished by the revolution or change of 1820, and when the counterchange came, in 1823, failed to find its place in the restored order of things. It may be hoped, therefore, that this most odious of the institutions, that have sheltered themselves under the abused name of Christianity, will never again darken the history of Spain. Amidst such violence and confusion,--when men slept in armour, as they had during the Moorish contest, and knew not whether they should be waked amidst their households or amidst their enemies,--elegant letters, of course, could hardly hope to find shelter or resting-place. The grave political questions, that agitated the country and shook the foundations of society, were precisely those in which it might be foreseen, that intellectual men would take the deepest interest and expose themselves to sufferings and ruin, like the less favored masses around them. And so, in fact, it proved. Nearly every poet and prose-writer, known as such at the end of the reign of Charles the Fourth, became involved in the fierce political changes of the time;--changes so various and so opposite, that those who escaped from the consequences of one were often, on that very account, sure to suffer in the next that followed.