3. COUNT D’OLAVIDES.--Don Paul, Count d’Olavides, was an extraordinary person. He undertook the fertilising Sierra Morena, or the Black Mountain, on which he planted colonies of Germans. These being Protestants, he was apprehended as a heretic, A.D. 1776. Limborch says, “The victim which marks this period was the celebrated Olavides, whose arrest suspended the progress of colonisation in the Sierra Morena. This incident was derived from the same causes which contributed to the removal of his protector (d’Aranda). With a similar spirit of free-thinking, which he imbibed from the fashionable philosophers of the day, he was equally offended by the obstacles which he experienced in his beneficial designs, from the prejudices and institutions of Spain. As most of the colonists were Protestants, he resisted all endeavours for their conversion, and opposed the attempt to enforce their attendance on the rites of the Catholic worship. Having established a law to permit no monks in the vicinity of the settlement, he obtained an order for the removal of a convent, and built his own house on the site. He frequently indulged himself in expressions of ridicule against the idleness and licentiousness of the monks, and spoke with too great freedom of the depopulation and other mischiefs occasioned by the celibacy of the clergy. “Olavides’ imprudence awakened the jealousy of the Spanish church. His conduct was closely scrutinised; his works and actions were noted and exaggerated; and a formal accusation was preferred against him for heresy, before that tribunal which is considered as the bulwark of religion. The removal of his protector gave full scope to the machinations of his enemies. He was summoned to Madrid, under the pretence of rendering an account of the establishment under his care. Apprised of his danger, he made some ineffectual attempts to obtain the royal protection, and to soothe the guardians of the faith; but after a residence of a twelvemonth in the capital, he was suddenly arrested, and conveyed to the prisons of the Inquisition; his papers were seized, and his effects sequestrated.” After two years of impenetrable seclusion, his process was closed, and his sentence was publicly announced. We give an account of this ceremony in the words of an eye-witness:--