become the right hand of the policy of Charles V., and the supreme power in the Government of his grandson, Philip II.--lost all the precious gifts of enlightenment in a blind and frantic fanaticism. The people only awoke from lethargy, and showed any animation, to rush in crowds to the _Autos da fé_ in which the ministers of the altar turned Christian charity into a bleeding corpse, and reproduced the terrible scenes of the Roman amphitheatre. Where the patricians had cried 'Christians to the lions!' superstition shouted 'Heretics to the stake!' Humanity was not less outraged than in the spectacle of Golgotha. Spanish monarchs even authorised by their presence those sanguinary spectacles, while the nobles and great personages in the kingdom thought themselves honoured when they were made _alguiciles_, or familiars of the holy office. Theocratic power preponderated, and intellectual movement became paralysed, civilisation stagnated." This has ever been the result of priestly rule. One can understand the feeling of the liberal-minded Spaniard of to-day that, without wishing to interfere with the charitable works inaugurated by the clergy, nor desiring in any way to show disrespect to the Church, or the religion which is dear to the hearts of the people, a serious danger lies, as the Press is daily pointing out, in the religious orders, more especially the Jesuits, obtaining a pernicious influence over the young, undermining by a system of secret inquisition the teachings of science, gaining power over the minds of the officers in the army, and establishing a press agency which shall become a danger to the constitution. Spain's outlook seems brighter to-day than it has ever been since her Golden Age of Isabella and Ferdinand; and it is the people who have awakened, a people who have shown what power lies in them to raise their beloved country to the position which is her right among the nations of the world. But prophecy is vain in a country of which it has been said "that two and two never make four." This year, if all go well meantime, Alfonso XIII. will take the reins in his own hands--a mere boy, even younger than his father was when called to the throne; than whom, however, Spain has never had a more worthy ruler. But Alfonso XII. had been schooled by adversity--he had to some extent roughed it amongst Austrian and English boys. He came fresh from Sandhurst and from the study of countries other than his own. To a naturally clever mind he had added the invaluable lesson of a knowledge of the world as seen by one of the crowd, not from the close precincts of a court and the elevation of a throne.