I endeavoured to find my way from the bridge to the posada by a different road,--but this was an attempt of some difficulty. I believe there is no town in Europe in which it is so difficult to find ones way, as in Toledo: the streets are innumerable; few of them are more than three yards wide; they are steep, tortuous and short, constantly branching off at acute angles, so that all idea of direction is soon lost; and there are no open spaces from which some prominent object may be taken as a guide. A gentleman who had resided fourteen years in Toledo, told me that he was not acquainted with half of the streets; and that it was no unusual occurrence to lose himself, in endeavouring to find near cuts from one place to another. Although I arrived at the posada two hours later than I expected, I had nothing to regret in the delay; my mistakes having carried me through parts of the town which I might not otherwise have had an opportunity of seeing. Walking through Toledo, there is a subject of more melancholy reflection than that which arises from the vestiges of former greatness; I mean, the abundant proofs of bigotry and ignorance that are gathered at every step. There is no city of Spain so entirely given up to the domination of the priests and friars, as Toledo; because there is no other city in which these form so large a portion of the population, or where the riches of the religious bodies are so preponderating. Toledo, it is believed, once contained 200,000 inhabitants; forty or fifty years ago, it contained, according to the writers of those days, about 30,000; at this day, its inhabitants do not exceed 16 or 17,000; but throughout this progressive decay, the convents and churches, the priests and friars, have continued undiminished: the cathedral is still served by its forty canons, and fifty prebendaries, and fifty chaplains; the thirty-eight parish churches and chapels, have still their curates, and their assistants, and their many dependents; and the thirty-six convents and monasteries, have yet their compliment of friars and nuns. The revenues, indeed, of all these religious bodies, have suffered some diminution during the last fifty years; but this diminution has been nothing in comparison with the decrease in the resources of all the other classes of inhabitants. The revenues of the archbishop amounted fifty years ago, to seven millions of reals, (70,000_l._ sterling); at present they do not exceed four millions of reals, (40,000_l._ sterling): the incomes of the canons amounted, at the former period, to at least eighty thousand reals (or 800_l._ sterling); now, they scarcely reach one half of this sum: all these diminutions are the result of the fall in the price of corn, in which their revenues are computed. But the incomes of the curates of the parishes are still more reduced, many of the parishes having entirely fallen into decay: there are some, in which there are not now twenty inhabited houses; so that the curates of these,