so readily ascribe to superstition the peculiarities in religion of the Spaniards, and of the vast body of Christians who accord with them in belief; and that we denounce their habitual respect for consecrated things as mere clerical imposition or art of interested men.

The Escorial is rich in literary treasures. Its books are deposited in two noble and beautiful apartments. The principal library consists of printed works, arranged in a large hall, one hundred ninetyfour feet in length, decorated with fluted columns and appropriate paintings. The second library is above the first, and of the same length, and contains, with many printed books, an invaluable collection of manuscripts. Among the manuscripts of the Escorial are a Greek Bible of the Emperor Cantacuzene; manuscripts of Athanasius, Basil, Gregory, Chrysostom, and other fathers; part of a rich Arabic library, captured in the reign of Philip III. from Zidan, King of Morocco; and a splendid copy of the Evangelists, written in letters of gold by order of the Emperor Conrad. There is a singularity in regard to the fine old volumes, which composed the original basis of the library. They are richly bound, and have the edge of the leaves gilded; and the title being printed on this gilt edge, the books are placed on the shelves with the front of the volume advanced to the eye instead of the back. In visiting this, as the other great libraries in Europe, one is forcibly struck with a sense of the

treasures of calm enjoyment they contain, the advantages they afford for studious labor, the allurements to intellectual pursuit they hold forth, and the munificent means, which the scholar thus possesses, of associating with the mighty dead in the study of their writings here in the very palace of kings. How poor, how mean, at such moments especially, appear all the feverish pursuits of gain, ambition, or corrupt pleasure, which occupy the world so intensely, the senseless violence of party rancor, the wordy warfare of newspapers and public assemblies, the deadlier strife of the battle field! Who, if the consideration of our great duties as men and as members of society sanctioned it, but would choose the learned leisure of the Escorial or the Vatican, before the cares of government or fortune in Rome or Madrid?

It remains only that I speak of the panteon, that sumptuous but sad repository for the mortal remains of the monarchs of Spain, which surpasses all other portions of the Escorial in magnificence. It is a vault, so constructed under the church, that the priest, who officiates at the great altar, stands upon the keystone of its arch. Descending twentyfive steps of granite, you arrive at the outer portal of the panteon, ornamented with columns of marble with bases and capitals of gilt bronze, and two allegorical statues of bronze, and bearing a Latin inscription, indicative of the purposes of the place. Entering here, you proceed by thirty-four steps of

polished marble, separated into stations or landing places, to the sepulchre itself. This whole passage is covered with marbles and jaspers of the richest quality and workmanship, with occasional ornaments of gilt bronze. From the last landing place a side stair-case conducts you to a sepulchre called Panteon de los Infantes, designed for members of the royal family; the principal vault, called Panteon de los Reyes, being appropriated to crowned kings and to queens who have left posterity.

The Panteon de los Infantes is a highly finished oblong apartment, thirty-six feet in length by sixteen in breadth, containing the bodies of upwards of fifty of the queens and children of the royal House of Spain. Here lies the unfortunate Don Carlos, slain by order of his father Philip II., on account of a supposed intimacy with his third wife, and the young Queen, Elizabeth, who also fell a victim of the same accusation; and their remains were deposited here on the same day, the first tenants of this chamber of death. Here are the three sons of Philip's fourth marriage, who one after the other were cut off in youth, as if in punishment of the cruel acts, which made way for their birth. Here is the celebrated Don Juan de Austria, an illegitimate son of Charles V., but the heir of his talents and of no small share of his fame. Here is the great Duc de Vendôme, natural son of Louis XIV., who, by his courage and conduct, could place his nephew, Philip of Anjou, on the throne of Spain, but, dying in the

vigor of his days, gained for himself only a niche in the vaults of the Escorial. And here lie the successive wives of the seventh Ferdinand, good, amiable, and pure hearted enough to have graced private life and to honor a throne, but each doomed to a childless bed and an early death, as if Heaven willed to save them from the infirmities of sex and the contamination of this world.

But it is in the Panteon de los Reyes that all the luxury of funereal art has been exhausted. It is an octagon thirty-six feet in diameter and thirty-eight in height, composed of jasper, marble, and bronze. The door of entrance occupies one of the octangles, and the altar is placed in the opposite one; and the remaining six, separated by marble pilasters, contain twenty-four marble tombs supported on claws of bronze, which are destined to be the last temporal abiding places of those, to whom the wealth of the Indies and the power of Spain were all too little for contentment on earth. The floor is paved in marbles of diversified colors and in radiating lines like a star. Over head, the vault or cupola, pierced with eight windows, two of which admit a faint light, is decorated with bronze mouldings, and from it hangs a beautiful chandelier. The altar, and all the other details of this royal grave, are of corresponding beauty and splendor. Eight kings and eight queens have already been interred here: the sepulchral urns, for those who shall succeed them, stand ready to receive the last remains of

royalty. The Emperor Charles, the great founder of the Austrian dynasty, begins the melancholy tale of death; and it ends with the fourth of this name, and his weak and vicious Queen Maria Luisa, in whom the glories of their kingdom and house were sacrificed to her hatred of her own offspring, and her criminal fondness for an upstart adventurer.

'Proud names, who once the reins of empire held ;’-

monarchs, whose will was law and their look command, they, and their glories, triumphs, conquests, are all shrunk to this little measure.' Within this narrow chamber their descendants may retire from the splendors of royalty, to muse on the nothingness of life, or draw lessons of admonition from the actions of their predecessors; for too few of them afford examples of true greatness or virtue: --and indulge in those feelings, so peculiar to their race, which caused Charles V. to enter his coffin, and submit in anticipation to the solemn services of burial,-which induced Philip II. to build his palace and cemetery under the same roof,—and which prompted Maria Luisa to select and mark with her name the niche in which her remains should be deposited.

I ascended from this mansion of the dead in no mood to be interested by the palace, or the grounds around the monastery, which, however tasteful and pleasing, are not deserving of very particular notice, at least in comparison with other parts of the founda