bare possible lawfulness, and bid adieu to the hope of possession. Wherever unnatural privations make not a part of the clerical duty, many may find themselves in the Church who might be better elsewhere. But no great effort is wanted to make them happy in themselves, and useful to the community. Not so under the unfeeling tyranny of our ecclesiastical law. For, where shall we find that virtue which, having Nature herself for its enemy, and misery for its meed, will be able to extend its care to the welfare of others?--As to myself, the tenour and colour of my life were fixed the moment I expressed my childish wish of being a clergyman. The love of knowledge, however, which betrayed me into the path of wretchedness, has never forsaken its victim. It is probable that I could not have found happiness in uneducated ignorance. Scanty and truly hard-earned as it is the store on which my mind feeds itself, I would not part with it for a whole life of unthinking pleasure: and since the necessity of circumstances left me no path to mental enjoyment, except that I have so painfully trodden, I hail the moment when I entered it, and only bewail the fatality which fixed my birth in a Catholic country. [11] The secular clergy are not bound by vows. Celibacy is enforced upon them by a law which makes their marriage illegal, and punishable by the Ecclesiastical Courts. “The order of events would here require an account of the system of Spanish education, and its first effects upon my mind; but, since I speak of myself only to shew the state of my country, I shall proceed with the moral influence, that, without interruption, I may present the facts relating severally to the heart and intellect, in as large masses as the subject permits.