This curious play is performed, at least once a year, on every Spanish theatre; when the Franciscan friars, instead of enforcing the standing rule, which forbids the exhibition of the monkish dress upon the stage, regularly lend the requisite suits to the actors: so favourable is the impression it leaves in favour of that mendicant order. Our truly Thespian entertainment was just concluded, when we heard the church-bell toll what in Spain is called _Las Animas_--the Souls. A man, bearing a large lantern with a painted glass, representing two naked persons enveloped in flames, entered the court, addressing every one of the company in these words:--_The Holy Souls, Brother! Remember the Holy Souls._ Few refused the petitioner a copper coin, worth about the eighth part of a penny. This custom is universal in Spain. A man, whose chief employment is to be agent for the souls in purgatory, in the evening--the only time when the invisible sufferers are begged for about the towns--and for some saint or _Madonna_, during the day, parades the streets after sunset, with the lantern I have described, and never fails to visit the inns, where the travellers, who generally entrust their safety from robbers to the _holy souls_, are always ready to make some pecuniary acknowledgement for past favours, or to engage their protection in future dangers. The tenderness of all sorts of _believing_ Spaniards for the souls in purgatory, and the reliance they place on their intercession with God, would almost be affecting, did it not originate in the most superstitious credulity.