To speak correctly, the decline of religious supremacy in Spain is by no means recent. It was coeval with that of the arts, and of the political grandeur of the country. The gradual cessation of the vast gifts and endowments for the erection of the religious establishments was a symptom of devotional enthusiasm having passed its zenith. Had not this occurred nearly three centuries back, Madrid would not have wanted a Cathedral. Nothing could ever have tended more directly to compromise the durability of Christianity in Spain, than the final expulsion or extermination of the Moors and Jews. Had Torquemada and a few others possessed heads as clear and calculating as their hearts were resolute and inexorable--a knowledge of human nature as profound as their ambition of divine honours was exalted, they would have taken care not entirely to deprive the Church of food for its passions and energies. They would not have devoured all their heretics at a single meal, but would have exercised more _ménagement_ and less voracity. They would have foreseen that by burning a few hundred Jews and Arabs less each year, nourishment would remain to animate the declamations of preachers, and the energies of the faithful; without which the fatal effects of sloth and indifference must inevitably take root in the imaginations, and eventually undermine their lofty fabric. The decline was, however, so gradual as to exercise no perceptible influence on the general conduct of the population, by whom forms were still observed, churches filled, and acts of devotion unceasingly accomplished. A variety of causes (into a description of which it is not my object, nor would it be your wish, that I should enter, but of which one of the most influential has been the importation of foreign ideas--as well through natural channels, as by special and interested exertions) has precipitated the _dénouement_ of this long-commenced revolution; and that with so headlong a rapidity, that, in that Spain which surpassed all other nations in bigoted attachment to religious rites, the confiscation of all the possessions of the Church, under a promise (not to be performed) of salaries for a certain number of ecclesiastics, insufficient for the continuation of the ancient ceremonies, is received by the population with indifference! The Cathedral of Toledo, deprived of the greater number of its functionaries,--including its archbishop and fifty-six of its sixty canons, and no longer possessing, out of an income of hundreds of thousands sterling, a treasure sufficient for providing brooms and sweepers for its pavement,--will, in perhaps not much more than another year, if the predictions of the inhabitants be verified, be finally closed to public worship.