I could hear nothing of the immorality of the convents within the city, though there are several without the walls,--one especially, a female convent,--said to be connected with the contrabandisters; making their convents depots for smuggled goods, and of course receiving a liberal share of the profits. Only three among the eighty-one convents give any thing to the poor, and two of these live upon charity themselves,--the Capuchins and Franciscans; the other that feeds the poor, is the Carthusian convent. Formerly, many more of the convents distributed alms; and, I understand, that since the limitation of convent charity, there has been a sensible diminution in the number of those who seemed to stand in need of it; a result that may easily be credited. Those convents which belong to the orders who live on charity, want for no luxury which their rules permit them to enjoy. I have more than once followed the footsteps of the Franciscan with his sack, in his morning peregrination through the Seville markets: one gave a handful of lettuces; another, a bunch of carrots; a third, a couple of melons, or a few pomegranates; a fourth, a loaf of bread; and I remarked, that every contribution was carefully picked, that the convent might have the best. If vice degrade the manners of the upper and middle classes in Seville, crime of a darker turpitude disfigures the character and conduct of the lower orders. Scarcely a night passes without the commission of a murder; but these crimes are not perpetrated in cold blood, from malevolent passions; still less, from love of gain; they generally spring from the slightest possible causes. The Andalusian is not so abstemious as the Castilian; and the wine he drinks, is stronger: he has also a greater propensity for gambling, the fruitful engenderer of strife; and the climate has doubtless its influence upon his passions. “Will you taste with me?” an Andalusian will say to some associate with whom he has had some slight difference,--offering him his glass. “No, _gracias_,” the other will reply. The former, already touched with wine, will half drain his glass, and present it again, saying, “Do you not wish to drink with me?”--and if the other still refuses the proffered civility, it is the work of a moment to drain the glass to the dregs--to say, “How! not taste with me?” and to thrust the knife an Andalusian always carries with him, into the abdomen of the comrade who refused to drink with him. It is thus, and in other ways equally simple, that quarrel and murder disfigure the nightly annals of every town in Andalusia, and of the other provinces of the south of Spain. There is an hospital in Seville dedicated to the sole purpose of receiving wounded persons. I had the curiosity to visit it, and ascertained that during the past fourteen days, twenty-one persons had been received into the hospital wounded from stabs: they would not inform me how many of these had died.