Modern laws, we are told, have done much to abate the danger and ferocity of bull-fights. The horns of the bull are sawed off, so that he cannot gore, and spears are not allowed of more than a certain length, so that the bull cannot be killed by a direct blow; but, in my opinion, it would be really better for effect upon moral character that a bullfight should be, as it once was, a battle for life between man and beast, for then it was an exhibition of skill and daring, around which were sometimes thrown the graces of chivalry. The danger to which the man exposed himself, to a certain extent atoned for the barbarities inflicted on the bull. Here for eight days bulls with blunted horns had been stabbed, mangled, and tortured; many, no doubt, died of their wounds, or were killed because they could not recover; and that day we had seen four men struck down and carried off, two of whom had narrowly escaped with their lives, if, indeed, they ever recovered. After the immediate excitement of the danger, the men were less objects of commiseration than the beasts, but the whole showed the still bloody effects of this modified system of bull-fighting. Men go into all places without shame, though not without reproach, but I am happy in being able to say that none of what are called the higher classes of the ladies of Merida were present. Still there were many whose young and gentle faces did not convey the idea that they could find pleasure in scenes of blood, even though but the blood of brutes. In the evening we took another hot-bath at the loteria, and the next day was Sunday, the last day of the fiesta, which opened in the morning with grand mass in the church of San Cristoval. The great church, the paintings and altars, the burning of incense, the music, the imposing ceremonies of the altar, and the kneeling figures, inspired, as they always do, if not a religious, at least a solemn feeling; and, as on the occasion of grand mass in the Cathedral on my first visit to Merida, among the kneeling figures of the women my eyes rested upon one with a black mantle over her head, a prayer-book in her hand, and an Indian woman by her side, whose face exhibited a purity and intellectual softness which it was easy for the imagination to invest with all those attributes that make woman perfect. Whether she was maid, wife, or widow, I never learned.