The wearing the mantilla at church, I have heard attributed to the despotic power of the priests over the women:--the chulos of the bull-ring, there exercise equal despotism over the men. Blanco White narrates that during the plague at Seville, and when religious fervour was, in consequence, at its height, a priest at Alcala “claimed and exercised a right to exclude from church such females as by a showy dress were apt to disturb the abstracted yet susceptible minds of the clergy. It should be observed, by the way, that as the walking dress of the Spanish females absolutely precludes immodesty, the conduct of this religious madman admits of no excuse or palliation. Yet this is so far from being a singular instance, that what sumptuary laws would never be able to accomplish, the rude and insolent zeal of a few priests has fully obtained in every part of Spain. Our females, especially those of the better classes, never venture to church in any dress but such as habit has made familiar to the eyes of the zealots.” I was present at the festival of the patron saints of the place, and, throughout the whole population, saw not one coloured dress or one bonnet. The mantilla was worn in deference to the priests, who are to-day as powerful as they ever have been, and as despotic as they could ever wish to be. A more perfect contrast there cannot be than between the cathedral and a fashionable tertulia. In the former nothing is to be seen but the black and glittering silk and the rich blonde: at the other no trace of Spain--not even in the music or the dances--no mantilla, no bolero, no fandango, no guitar, no castanet--nothing but the unmeaning quadrille, the shuffling heedless step, the Paris millinery, the false tints and kaleidoscope patterns:--everything commonplace and vulgar, or rather the bad imitation of vulgarity and commonplace. The conversation wanted even the compensation you meet with in Europe--stored memories, clever flippancy, and gladiatorial faculties. Thus a people who, had they remained themselves,[101] would have been, in their forms as in their character, an object of study and of admiration, are converted (the higher orders, I mean) into something which must inflict disappointment, if not inspire contempt.