About the age of fifty, (for spiritual flirtation seldom exhausts itself before that age,) the genuine nun has settled every feeling and affection upon that shifting centre of the universe, which, like some circles in astronomy, changes with every step of the individual--I mean _self_. It has been observed that no European language possesses a true equivalent for your English word _comfort_; and, considering the state of this country, Spanish would have little chance of producing a similar substantive, were it not for some of our nuns, who, as they make a constant practical study of the subject, may, at length, enrich our dictionary with a name for what they know so well without it. Their comforts, however, poor souls! are still of an inferior kind, and arise chiefly from the indulgence of that temper, which, in the language of your _ladies’ maids_, makes their mistresses _very particular_; and which, by a strange application of the word, confers among us the name of _impertinente_. The squeamishness, fastidiousness, and morbid sensibility of nuns, make that name a proverbial reproach to every sort of affected delicacy. As great and wealthy nunneries possess considerable influence, and none can obtain the patronage of the Holy Sisters (_Mothers_, they are called by the Spaniards,) without accommodating themselves to the tone and manners of the society; every person, male or female, connected with it, acquires a peculiar mincing air, which cannot be mistaken by an experienced observer. But in none does it appear more ludicrously than in the old-fashioned _nun-doctors_. Their patience in listening to long, minute, and often-told reports of cases; the mock authority with which they enforce their prescriptions, and the peculiar wit they employ to raise the spirits of their patients, would, in a more free country, furnish comedy with a most amusing character. Some years ago a very stupid practitioner bethought himself of taking orders, thus to unite the spiritual and bodily leech, for the convenience of nuns. The Pope granted him a dispensation of the ecclesiastical law, which forbids priests to practise physic; and he found himself unrivalled in powers, among the faculty. The scheme succeeded so well that our doctor sent home for a lad, his nephew, whom he has brought up in this twofold trade, which, for want of direct heirs, of which priests in this country cannot boast, is likely to be perpetuated in the collateral branches of that family. With regard to their curative system, as it applies to the souls, I am a very incompetent judge: the body, I know--at least the half-spiritualized bodies of the nuns--they treat exclusively with syrups. This is a fact of which I have a melancholy proof in a near relation, a most amiable young woman, who was allowed to drop into an early grave, while her growing disease was opposed with nothing but syrup of violets! I must add, however, that the wary doctor, not