I found the hospital well worthy of a visit; it is not yet completed, but is calculated to accommodate 250 patients. When I visited it, there were only 50 patients, whose diseases were consumption and old age. One part of the establishment I greatly approve of; a ward of the building is appropriated for the reception of strangers, or persons of a superior rank in life, who may be desirous of good advice at a moderate expense, and without occasioning trouble to friends or relations: these pay half a dollar per day, and have all the best hospital attendance united with the comforts of a private house. I can scarcely conceive a more welcome piece of intelligence to an unfortunate stranger, seized with a severe malady in a foreign place, than the existence of an institution like this. In walking through the wards, I noticed books in the hands of several of the patients; these were chiefly forms of prayer; but seeing one sick man laughing heartily over his studies, I had the curiosity to approach his bed near enough to ascertain that he was engaged with a comedy of _Lopez de Vega_. Passing along the streets, I frequently met the boys belonging to a charity school, the only one in Bilbao; they were, with few exceptions, very raggedly dressed, and most of them provided with little bells, with which they produced not an inharmonious music: the cause of their ragged dress is easily explained by the want of funds, which arise solely from the trifling imposition of four reals per ton upon every foreign vessel entering the port. The only explanation I was able to get of the ringing of bells is, that this custom is pleasing to the virgin. There is another sort of music peculiar to Biscay, of the most discordant kind, and which I cannot recollect even now, without unpleasant sensations. This music is produced by the wheels of the carts drawn by oxen: these are solid, without spokes, and a strong wooden screw is made to press upon the axle of the wheel; the consequence of this, is a sound so horribly grating, that the faintest conception of it cannot be conveyed by words. The peasant supposes, that without this noise, the oxen would not go willingly; and if they be once accustomed to it, this may perhaps be true. No carriage being allowed to pass along the streets of Bilbao, they are of course free from this intolerable nuisance: in the town of _Orduña_, also, it is not permitted; but on all the roads of the Basque provinces, and especially in the streets of Vittoria, this noise is so unintermitting, that nothing could tempt me to reside in that town.