that the persons who were guilty of these acts of pillage are excellent judges of paintings, for they never fail to keep the best things for themselves. The courtyards and cloisters are admirable, and are adorned with fountains, orange-trees, and flowers. How excellently are such places adapted for reverie, meditation, and study, and what a pity is it that convents were ever inhabited by monks, and not by poets! The gardens, left to themselves, have assumed a wild, savage aspect; luxuriant vegetation has invaded the walks, and Nature has regained possession of her own, planting a tuft of flowers or grass in the place of every stone that has fallen out. The most remarkable feature in these gardens is an alley of enormous laurels, forming a covered walk which is paved with white marble, and furnished, on each side, with a long seat of the same material, with a slanting back. At certain distances from each other, a number of small fountains maintain a refreshing coolness beneath this thick vault of verdure, at the end of which you have a splendid view of a portion of the Sierra Nevada, through a charming Moorish mirador, which forms part of an old Arabic palace, enclosed in the convent. This pavilion is said to have communicated, by means of long subterranean galleries, with the Alhambra, which is situated at some considerable distance. However, this is an idea deeply rooted in the minds of the inhabitants of Granada, where the least Moorish ruin is always presented with five or six leagues of subterranean passages as well as a treasure, guarded by some spell or other. We often went to San Domingo to sit beneath the shade of the laurels and bathe in a pool, near which, if the satirical songs are to be believed, the monks used to lead no very reputable sort of life. It is a remarkable fact, that the most Catholic countries are always those in which the priests and monks are treated most cavalierly; the Spanish songs and stories about the clergy rival, in licence, the facetiæ of Rabelais and Beroalde de Verville, and to judge by the manner in which all the ceremonies of the church are parodied in the old pieces, one would hardly think that the Inquisition had ever existed.