I have on different occasions spent a day with some friends at the _Hospederia_, or Stranger’s Lodge, at the Carthusians of Seville, where it is the duty of the steward, the only monk who is allowed to mix in society, to entertain any male visitors who, with a proper introduction, repair to the monastery. The steward I knew before my visit to England, had been a merchant. After several voyages to Spanish America, he had retired from the world, which, it was evident in some unguarded moments, he had known and loved too well to have entirely forgotten. His frequent visits to the town, ostensibly upon business, were not entirely free from suspicion among the idle and inquisitive; and I have some reason to believe that these rumours were found too well grounded by his superiors. He was deprived of the stewardship, and disappeared for ever from the haunts of men. The austerity of the Carthusian rule of life would cast but a transient gloom on the mind of an enlightened observer, if he could be sure that the misery he beheld was voluntary; that hope kept a crown of glory before the eyes of every wretched prisoner, and that no unwilling victim of a temporary illusion, was pining for light and liberty, under the tombstone sealed over him by religious tyranny. But neither the view of the monks, fixed as statues in the stalls of their gloomy church, nor those that are seen in the darkest recesses of the cloisters, prostrate on the marble pavement, where, wrapt up in their large white mantles, they spend many an hour in meditation; nor the bent, gliding figures which wander among the earthy mounds under the orange-trees of the cemetery--that least melancholy spot within the wall of the monastery,--nothing did ever so harrow my feelings in that mansion of sorrow, as the accidental meeting of a repining prisoner. This was a young monk, who, to my great surprise, addressed me as I was looking at the pictures in one of the cloisters of the Carthusians near Seville, and very politely offered to shew me his cell. He was perfectly unknown to me, and I have every reason to believe that I was equally so to him. Having admired his collection of flowers, we entered into a literary conversation, and he asked me whether I was fond of French literature. Upon my shewing some acquaintance with the writers of that nation, and expressing a mixed feeling of surprise and interest at hearing a Carthusian venturing upon that topic, the poor young man was so thrown off his guard, that, leading me to a bookcase, he put into my hands a volume of Voltaire’s _Pièces Fugitives_, which he spoke of with rapture. I believe I saw a volume of Rousseau’s works in the collection; yet I suspect that this unfortunate man’s _select library_ consisted of amatory rather than philosophical works. The monk’s name is unknown to me, though I learned from him the place of his birth; and many years have elapsed since this strange meeting, which from its