The greatest and the richest among the convents of Madrid, is Las Salesas. It was founded by Ferdinand the VIth., and is adorned with a profusion of the most beautiful marbles and porphyries of Cuenca and Granada. I noticed several columns of green marble, upwards of sixteen feet high, and each of one piece. Both in the church of the convent, and in its sacristy, there are some good pictures; and a fine marble monument, raised by command of Charles III. to the memory of the founder, does credit to the taste of Francisco Sabatini, who designed it, and to the powers of Francisco Gutierrez, who executed it. The morning service in the church of this convent is enchanting; the nuns, all of noble family, and well educated,--chiefly in the same convent,--seem to have made music a principal study. I have never heard an organ touched with so delicate a hand, as in the Convento de las Salesas. The church of the Convent de la Encarnacion, also a female convent of bare-footed Augustins, contains beautiful marbles, and some pictures perhaps worth a visit, by Castillo, Bartolomé, Roman, and Greco. The Franciscan convent is worth visiting, only on account of its great extent; it contains ten courts, and dormitories for two hundred monks. Every where the Franciscans are the most numerous. It is said of Cirillo, the chief, or general, as he is called, of the Franciscan order,--he who is now exiled from Madrid,--that he boasted of his power of putting 80,000 men under arms: a force almost equal to the king’s. The head of the Franciscan order used formerly to reside in Rome, but the present head has made choice of Spain. The convent of Santa Isabel was robbed by the French of many choice works of Españoletto; but it still possesses some pictures by Cerezo, Cœllo, and others,--these are in the church of the convent; but it is said that there are others in the interior, which it is difficult, if not impossible, to see. There cannot be a doubt, that among the many hundred convents in Spain, in the interior of many of which no man has ever been,--no one, at all events, whose object has been to search for pictures,--there are hidden, many productions of the first masters. These may have come into their possession in many ways; they may have been the individual property of distinguished persons previous to taking the veil; they may have been bequeathed to the convent by the founder; the gift of the painters themselves; or offerings of the devout: but it is certain, that pictures of value and merit are shut up in convents. I am acquainted with a gentleman at Seville, who himself purchased “Joseph’s Dream,” by Juanes, and a portrait by Giordano, from the abbess of the Dominican convent at Seville,--who sold them in order to purchase certain ornaments for one of the altars.