Your great goodness will excuse the tardiness of this letter, when I assure you, that I have been long ambitious of collecting any thing, that might deserve your notice; tho hitherto I have been successless in that desire. Many things indeed have occurred observable to me; but I could not hope at the same time, that they might appear such to you. For it is common with unexperienced travelers to be transported with pleasure and admiration, when their accounts are not able to raise the same affections in their freinds; either because they converse with men of better judgment, or because the most valuable relations must needs be heard with a greater coldness, than the things were seen. But notwithstanding these discouragements, I have lately looked back upon my _Journal_, to see if any thing might there appear remarkable at this distance; and tho a short voyage by sea must be barren of all real curiosity, yet for the subject of this letter I shall now trouble you with some of the things, which I observed at _Cadiz_, _Messina_, and _Milo_, the three only places, where we touched in our passage hither. In _Cadiz_, as in most other parts of the Spanish dominions, there is nothing very curious, but in their churches or convents; and this, when once seen, is to be deplored, rather than admired. For when you first come into the town, you are not so much struck with a face of religion, as with the notion of a certain politic game, where the priests are soon discovered to be the only winners. Since in the whole place there is nothing fat and well favoured, but the clergy. The rest of the inhabitants appear meagre, wan, and melancholy, being mostly employed either in repairing to mass, or returning from it; sometimes counting their beads, and at other times perhaps lugging an heavy Saint in their arms. And therefore, were they not supported under this condition by a certain natural pride, which is fed partly with the real history of their former state, and partly with a romantic imagination of their present grandeur; they would soon become so sensible of their slavish poverty and superstition, as either to break their own hearts, or that yoke, which oppresses them.