I will not, however, permit that one who has so cordially saluted me every day, should go into everlasting fire.” Thus saying, she bade the evil spirit give up his prisoner, and the gallant soldier was sent to purge off the dross of his boisterous nature, in the gentler flames of purgatory.--A portion of the book from which I recollect this story, was, for many years, read every evening in one of the principal parishes at Seville. I observed the same practice at a town not far from the capital of Andalusia; and, for any thing I know to the contrary, it may be very common all over Spain. Such is the doctrine which, disowned in theory by the divines of the Roman church, but growing out of the system of saint-worship, constitutes the main religious feeling of the vulgar, and taints strongly the minds of the higher classes in Spain. The Chronicles of the Religious Orders are full of narratives, the whole drift of which is to represent their patron saint as powerful to save from the very jaws of hell. The skill of the painter has often been engaged to exhibit these stories to the eye, and the Spanish convents abound in pictures more encouraging to vice than the most profligate prints of the Palais Royal. I recollect one at Seville in the convent of the Antonines--a species of the genus _Monachus Franciscanus_ of the _Monachologia_--so strangely absurd, that I hope the reader will forgive my lengthening this note with its description. The picture I allude to was in the cloisters of the convent of San Antonio, facing the principal entrance, so late as the year 1810, when I was last at Seville. The subject is the hairbreadth escape of a great sinner, whom St. Francis saved against all chances. An extract from the Chronicles of the Order, which is found in a corner of the painting, informs the beholder that the person whose soul is represented on the canvass, was a lawless nobleman, who, fortified in his own castle, became the terror and abhorrence of the neighbourhood. As neither the life of man, nor the honour of woman, was safe from the violence of his passions, none willingly dwelt upon his lands, or approached the gate of the castle. It chanced, however, that two Franciscan friars, having lost the way in a stormy night, applied for shelter at the wicked nobleman’s gate, where they met with nothing but insult and scorn. It was well for them that the fame of St. Francis filled the world at that time. The holy saint, with the assistance of St. Paul, had lately cut the throat of an Italian bishop, who had resisted the establishment of the Franciscans in his diocese.[66]