The further you penetrate into the town, the more the sacred holiday stillness is ousted. All Seville is crowding, chattering and laughing to the Cathedral to see the procession. At last you have to stop. There is no getting through the impenetrable human wall. It is a strange procession that is passing by, as though conjured up from the Middle Ages. Huddled figures stalk past slowly and stiffly. They appear like spectres. Old pictures of witches and inquisitionary trials are recalled to my mind, for nowhere else have I ever seen such terrifying apparitions; never in life. Black cowls are wrapped around their bodies, and on their head are huge black conical hats a yard high. Long sable cloths, in which only two eyelets are pierced, are suspended over their faces down to their waists. A corded rope is wound round the penitential garments. The hands of the apparitions clasp rough wooden crosses, or metal staves, as tall as themselves. These figures march in front of a portable dais on which a life-like statue of the Virgin Mary is enthroned clad in magnificent garments thickly encrusted with gold.--The procession stops. The dais is lowered. A young woman steps from the crowd, turns her eyes to the Queen of Heaven and sings her praise. When the twenty or thirty bearers who carry the heavy dais on their shoulders, and who are hidden by drapery suspended round the frame, have rested enough, the signal to start is given by knocking on the front of the dais. A jerk, and the procession moves on a few paces. One religious body of brethren follows on the heels of the other. Each of them wear their own distinctive multi-coloured badges. Some have a blue pointed hat, others white, brown, violet or other coloured garments. Next to a father his ten-year old son in the same vestments is often seen, as well as the miniature penitent of fifteen in the procession. The various brotherhoods are filled with an ardent ambition to outdo the others in the magnificence of their Pasos as the daises are called. The whole story of the Passion from Gethsemane to the burial of our Lord, is shown on them as they pass before our eyes.--Of course the clergy in full canonicals, as well as the town and state officials are also represented in the procession. At intervals, groups of Roman legionaries of Christ’s day appear, then angels, and St. Veronica carrying the kerchief. Interspersed bands bray and flourish the same march without cess. Each brotherhood in the procession is cerimoniously received by the chief authority of the town in Constitution Square which looks like a huge theatre auditorium. It is filled with rows of chairs of which not a single one is empty. The surrounding balconies are a sea of heads.