ancient family, of the town of Esquivias. This marriage, however, does not seem to have much improved his fortune, for he began soon after to write for the stage as a means of supporting himself. In the next five years he composed between twenty and thirty plays, which were performed at Madrid, and, it would seem, most of them with success. A few are still remembered, namely, “Los Tratos de Argel,” in which he describes the scenes of Algerine captivity; “La Destruccion de Numancia,” and “La Batalla Naval.” He ceased to write for the stage about 1590, when Lope de Vega was rising into reputation. After this he lived several years at Seville, where he had some wealthy relatives, and where he appears to have been employed as a commercial agent. He was at Seville in 1598, at the time when Philip II. died. The pompous preparations for the funeral, the gorgeous hearse and pall, and the bombastic admiration of the people of Seville at their own magnificence on the occasion, excited the grave and sober Castilian’s vein of irony, and he ridiculed the boastful Andalusians in a sonnet which became celebrated, and which begins Voto à Dios que me espanta esta grandeza. “I declare to God that all this magnificence quite overwhelms me,” &c. He has also given an amusing account of the peculiar character, taste, and habits of the Sevillians in one of his tales, “Rinconete y Cortadillo,” in which he describes the several classes of the inhabitants of that city, which is the second in Spain, and, in many respects, offers a strong contrast to Madrid. It was in one of his journeys between these two cities that he resided some time in the province of La Mancha, which he has rendered famous by his great work. He examined attentively both the country and the people; he saw the cave of Montesinos, the Lagunas de Ruydera, the plain of Montiel, Puerto Lapice, the Batanas, and other places which he has described in Don Quixote. Being intrusted with some commission or warrant for recovering certain arrears of tithe due from the village of Argamasilla to the Prior of St. John of Consuegra, he incurred the hostility of the villagers, who disputed his powers, and threw him into prison; and he seems to have remained in confinement for some time, as during that period he imagined and sketched the first part of Don Quixote, as he himself has stated in the preface. He fixed upon this village of Argamasilla as the native place of his hero, without however mentioning its name, “which,” he says at the beginning of the book, “I have no particular wish to remember.” After this occurrence, we find Cervantes living with his family at Valladolid in 1604–5, while Philip III. and his court were residing there. There is a document among the records of the prison of that city, from which it appears that, in June 1605, Cervantes was taken up on suspicion of being concerned in a night brawl which took place near his house, and in which a knight of Santiago was mortally wounded.