La Rosa's malignity. Several times, on the way from the chapel to the place of execution, the assassin turned his head. and looked back, suspicious that his partner in the crime might not be coming. "Viene ese caballero ?" said he "Is that gentleman coming?"

An open space on the west side of the Guadal-Medina had been designated for the execution, and thither had been carried the corpse of the murdered young man; the Captain-General being resolved that no circumstance of horror should be wanting to deter others from the commission of similar crimes. And indeed the whole conduct of the affair produced an impression on the city such as never had been made before.

The fatal square being formed, La Rosa again, in a loud clear voice, insisted on the truth of all his declarations. Beneath the solemn adjurations of his confessor, he declared that he forgave Don Juan, and begged the bystanders to pray God to pardon him; and then in the true spirit of the Romish system, prayed them to say a Credo, and a Salve to the Virgin. del Carmen. This was probably the particular appellation under which he had been accustomed to make his own 66 Ora pro nobis" to the Virgin Mary-Maria del Carmen.

The criminals being seated together on the fatal bench, La Rosa turned to Don Juan, and with an expression of the most bitter sarcasm, asked- "Es esta la felicidad que usted me prometia ?" "Is this the happiness you promised me?" Don Juan, turning to his confessor, besought him to interpose, "Por Dios que no me mate ese hombre antes de tiempo!" "For God's sake do not let that man kill me before the time !" What more dialogue of this kind might have passed I know not; but certainly it was a foretaste of the wild world of the lost, for the murderer and his tempter thus to be brought together.

As I stood with the company of Spanish friends on the banks of the Guadal-Medina, opposite the place of execution, expecting the consummation of this tragedy of Justice, it was a

moment of most painful interest. Nature seemed not at all to sympathize in such a scene. The deep blue sky was cloudless, the bright rays of an autumnal sun poured down with a mild and genial warmth, and our temples were fanned by an air of such transparent purity and delicious balminess as to render the very breathing of it a luxury. In the natural world all was innocent, serene, and lovely, and here we were to witness the doom of men who had crimsoned the earth with their brother's blood; plotting and accomplishing a midnight murder under such circumstances that no peaceful citizen could be safe for a moment, if such crimes went unavenged.

As the appointed moment arrived, precisely at four o'clock, an officer's sword was raised in the air, and gleaming in the bright sunshine as it fell, gave the signal for the death-volley. A quick, sharp report, and the curling smoke from a dozen. muskets, told that all was over.-The body of Don Juan was followed to the grave by the lawyers of Malaga; and that of Rosa was buried by La Caridad, the brotherhood of Charity.

This execution was on the whole most salutary in its effect on the city of Malaga. I hardly ever knew such an instance of sudden and awful retribution. Had the Captain-General acted with less decision and promptitude-had the case been managed with the usual chicanery and delay of Spanish law tribunals, it was thought that Malaga would have become the theatre of fearful and bloody riots, which would most certainly have been turned by their leaders into occasions for gratifying party animosities and political vengeance. The excitement was intense, and it needed but the torch applied, to kindle it into a flame that would have well-nigh burned up the city. As it was, even amid the Carlist war, a calm succeeded to the agitation of the public mind, and men felt more secure than before; for in the midst of the horrors of the civil conflict, no man in Spain could have predicted that such an assassination in any city would have been overtaken with vengeance. The fact that it

so was overtaken, and that with such stern summariness, helped to save Malaga from the bloody tumults of the revolution.

Not a man doubted the guilt of Don Juan, neither was there at the time much doubt as to the participation of the wife of his victim in the murder. It was rumored that on one previous occasion they had together attempted to poison Don José. The public authorities considered her as implicated in the crime; she was therefore arrested, and for several weeks guarded by soldiers at her own house. It was thought that she would be publicly executed by the garrote, a mode of execution not unfrequently practised in Spain under the civil law. It is a very simple, though dreadful way of exterminating life, perhaps invented by the inquisition.

The criminal sits in an arm chair and an iron collar is placed round his neck, uniting by a screw behind, so that when the fatal moment arrives, a turn or two of the screw produces such a degree of compression as to cause instant death. The wife of Don José escaped this evil, being gradually forgotten by the public after the execution of Don Juan and La Rosa; an amount of justice quite unusual in Spain, amid the shocking corruption and bribery of the legal courts. I should hardly be believed, if I were to relate some illustrations of the nature of justice in Spain. And some of my own personal experience of the manner in which a gang of robbers will set all danger at defiance, and accomplish their schemes in the open villages in open day, would corroborate the wildest romance.

In the daily occurrences of human life, as well as in natural scenery, Spain is still as she was in the days of Don Quixote, one of the most romantic countries in the world, and is constantly exemplifying the verity of the adage that truth is stranger than fiction.

Ved que historia

Que a entrambos en un punto, o extraño Caso !

Los mata, Los eucubre, y resuscita,

Una espada, un sepulchro, una memoria.

CERVANTES.

FIESTAS AT MALAGA, AS VIEWED BY A PROTESTANT.

Whatever fruits in different climes are found,
That proudly rise, or humbly court the ground;
Whatever blooms in torrid tracts appear,
Whose bright succession decks the varied year;
Whatever sweets salute the northern sky
With vernal lives, that blossom but to die;
These here disporting own the kindred soil,
Nor ask luxuriance from the planter's toil.
But small the bliss that sense alone bestows,
And sensual bliss is all the nation knows.
In florid beauty groves and fields appear;
Man seems the only growth that dwindles here.
GOLDSMITH'S TRAVELLER.

THE religious condition of decaying Spain-its abject submission to the ecclesiastical despotism of Rome-its intestine feuds, and the civil internecine war then raging, weighed heavily upon the mind of the Protestant visitor at Malaga, in 1837. There are constant allusions to it in his Journal, and frequent entries like the following, after witnessing a burialservice, which is described minutely, in which a com

pany of orphan boys, called Hijos de Providencia, or Children of Providence, had a conspicuous part. As they go along, he says, they chant and respond. But, ah! how little is here thought of the future condition of the dead? and how unprepared, it is to be feared, are the most of those who enter the eternal world. under the extreme unction so vainly, superstitiously confided in, of the Priests of Rome? Sad, and dark, and gloomy, indeed, is the spiritual state of a Roman Catholic community like this of Spain. Oh, that God of his good providence might soon cause the pure and blessed religion of the Gospel, with its train of light and intelligent consolation, to supersede the ignorance and darkness of the Man of Sin!

Sabbath evening, May 7th, 1837.-Attended service at Mr. Marks, the English Consul, and heard another good sermon read from the text, "Whom having not seen ye love." This evening, in my walk, I met a procession which was announced in the Boletin this morning. It is called the procession of the Holy Cross, or, in Spanish, La procesion de la Santa Cruz. It was preceded and followed by soldiers of the National Guard, between whom walked priests and military officers bearing long wax candles, and six or eight others carry upon their shoulders a kind of tabernacle, in which was seen the Cross. There was another Cross also borne by a single man, and a crimson canopy borne by several others, to cover it in case of rain during the progress of the procession. The nuns uncovered their heads as it came, and the houses of the streets through which it passed had the balconies decorated with colored cloths. This is a part of the machinery of Rome, adopted from Paganism, to tickle, and please, and enslave the people; and how well it succeeds, the religious,