"Not lions crouching in their dens Surprise their heedless prey With greater cunning, or express More savage rage than they." Even the death of a prisoner is no barrier against the fury of the Inquisition, or the grave an asylum against its persecutions. His bones, in the event of being buried, are dug out of the grave and burnt, his memory is declared infamous, and his children are disinherited. Many are the instances of this barbarous practice on record, the chief motives of the holy tribunal in thus waging war with the dead, being to gain possession of their property. In proof of this, we shall notice the two following examples only. In the first auto-da-fé at Valladolid in 1559, Donna Leonora de Vibero, the mother of five children, who appeared as criminals on this occasion, had died some years before, and was buried in a sepulchral chapel of which she was the proprietress. No suspicion of heresy was attached to her at the time of her death; but, on the imprisonment of her children, the fiscal of the Inquisition at Valladolid commenced a process against her; and certain witnesses under the torture having deponed that her house was used as a temple for the Lutherans, sentence was passed, declaring her to have died in a state of heresy, her memory to be infamous, and her property confiscated; and ordering her bones to be dug up, and, together with her effigy, publicly committed to the flames; her house to be razed, the ground on which it stood to be sown with salt, and a pillar, with an inscription stating the cause of its demolition, to be erected on the spot. All this was done, and the last mentioned monument of fanaticism and ferocity against the dead was to be seen until the year 1809, when it was removed during the occupation of Spain by the French.