What is the general character of both priests and nuns, in Roman Catholic countries, is testified by many; and the testimony of the Rev. Blanco White, formerly chaplain to the king of Spain,--as he had the best means of information,--will be satisfactory regarding his own country. He says,--“Men of the first eminence in the church were the old friends of my family--my parents’ and my own spiritual directors. Thus I grew up, thus I continued in manhood, till at the age of five-and-thirty, religious oppression, and that alone, forced me away from kindred and country. The intimacy of friendship and undisguised converse of sacramental confessions opened to me the hearts of many whose exterior conduct might have deceived a common observer. The coarse frankness of associated dissoluteness left, indeed, no secrets among the spiritual slaves, who, unable to separate the laws of God from those of their tyrannical church, trampled both under foot in riotous despair. Such are the sources of the knowledge I possess: God, sorrow, and remorse, are my witnesses. “What need I say of the vulgar crowd of priests, who, coming, as the Spanish phrase has it, from _coarse swaddling clothes_, and raised by ordination to a rank of life for which they have not been prepared, mingle vice and superstition, grossness of feeling and pride of office, in their character? I have known the best among them; I have heard the confessions of young persons of both sexes, who fell under the influence of their suggestion and example; and I do declare that _nothing can be more dangerous to youthful virtue than their company_. How many souls would be saved from crime but for the vain display of superior virtue which Rome demands from her clergy! “The picture of _female convents_ requires a more delicate pencil, yet _I cannot find tints sufficiently dark and gloomy_ to portray the miseries which I have witnessed in their inmates. Crime, indeed, makes its way into those recesses, in spite of the spiked walls and prison gates which protect the inhabitants. _This I know_, with all the certainty which the self-accusation of the guilty can give. It is, besides, a notorious fact, that _the nunneries in Estremadura and Portugal are frequently infected with vice of the grossest kind_. But I will not dwell on this revolting part of the picture!”