At a short distance in front of the procession appeared a group of seven gigantic figures, male and female, whose dresses, contrived by the most skilful tailors and milliners of the town, regulated the fashion at Seville for the ensuing season. A strong man being concealed under each of the giants and giantesses, the gaping multitude were amused at certain intervals with a very clumsy dance, performed by the figures, to the sound of the pipe and tabor. Next to the Brobdignag dancers, and taking precedence of all, there followed, on a moveable stage, the figure of a Hydra encircling a castle, from which, to the great delight of all the children of Seville, a puppet not unlike Punch, dressed up in a scarlet jacket trimmed with morrice-bells, used often to start up; and having performed a kind of wild dance, vanished again from view into the body of the monster. The whole of this compound figure bore the name of _Tarasca_, a word of which I do not know either the meaning or derivation. That these figures were allegorical no one can doubt who has any knowledge of the pageants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It would be difficult, however, without the help of an obscure tradition, to guess that the giants in perriwigs and swords, and their fair partners in caps and petticoats, were emblems of the seven deadly sins. The Hydra, it should seem, represented Heresy, guarding the castle of Schism, where Folly, symbolized by the strange figure in scarlet, displayed her supreme command. This band of monsters was supposed to be flying in confusion before the triumphant sacrament. Mixed with the body of the procession, there appeared three sets of dancers; the _Valencianos_, or natives of the kingdom of Valencia, who, in their national costume of loose waistcoats, puffed linen sleeves, bound at the wrists and elbows with ribbons of various colours, and broad white trowsers reaching only to the knees, performed a lively dance, mingling their steps with feats of surprising agility: after these followed the sword-dancers in the old martial fashion of the country: and last of all, the performers of an antiquated Spanish dance--I believe the _Chacona_, dressed in the national garb of the sixteenth century.