to all present. Next, there was a sermon by
a Dominican, praising the Inquisition, and
denouncing heresy, and the procession moved
towards the piles, now dry, piled and stacked
with wood billets and faggots.

A few horrid moments of rivetting collars,
blankets: a twist or two of the garotte
for the least guilty: a struggle here and
there, with a demoniac yell, soon stifled by
cruel hands and driving blows. The fires were
lit. Now the excitement in the boxes got
greater and greater. The fans agitated in
black waves; the silk dresses too, waved like
flowery meadows in the March winds. But
no pity; not a tear. The flame raged with
cruel leaps and mounts; it drove up in great
quivering pyramids, that the wind now and
then drifted out in horizontal banners, showing
black bodies, black burning stakes, and
thin hands clasped together in prayer. Higher
and higher mounted the great twisted columns
of smoke; now turning to roaring and racing
masses of living fire, furiously, wrathfully,
and gluttonously hungering for victims.

I tossed down the book, surfeited with the
horrors of the scene. "How long," I cried,
in a burst of indignation, "is man to turn
earth into hell? how long to use Thy name
as a mask for his most loathsome wickedness
—how long—?"

"Halloh!" said the consul's voice behind
me. "What is the matter? I hope Pepe has
not been impudent! O, I see you've got hot
over that curious little book about the
Inquisition. Take care. Remember we are
in Spain. Pepe, bring some glasses; and, if I
catch you listening again——! I must
stow away that book before the Archbishop
comes. Never mention the Inquisition, my
dear Don Fulano, to a Spaniard. There is a
proverb of Audalucia:

             "Con el ojo y la Fè
               Nunca me burlare."
Briefly thus:
             "In my Faith and in my eye,
              No one has a right to pry."

               CHLOROFORM.

HARVEY'S discovery of the circulation of
the blood, and Jenner's introduction of
vaccination, stand out as great achievements
of  the past. Our own day has witnessed a
discovery scarcely less important than either;
namely, that by which surgical operations,
however serious and agonising, may be
undergone painlessly and indeed unconsciously.

Little more than half a score years ago, the
sufferer, the subject of operation, was obliged
to meet the pain inflicted by the surgeon's
knife with a bold front and determined courage;
or, if his heart failed, he was carried to
the operating table in a paroxysm of fear, and
bound hand and foot, while the wholesome
amputation was effected. The first year's
man, come to pursue his studies at the
hospital, seldom escaped his initiatory fainting,
while witnessing the cries and struggles
of the hapless patient. Operations had to
be deferred again and again, because the
latter feared to encounter the attendant
pain; and often they were at last
submitted to when the chance of cure had
almost passed. Not uncommonly it happened
that he who believed he had made up
his mind to meet the necessary evil bravely
and unflinchingly, suddenly lost all control
at the first step of the operation, and had
to be restrained by main force until it was
completed. The soldier who never feared
death itself on the battle-field, recoiled from
the deliberate wound inflicted by the surgeon's
scalpel; and it is reported of a gallant officer
in her Majesty's navy—who had been foremost
in many a desperate fight, and who was
reputed to be one of the bravest of admirals—
that, having expressed his readiness
to submit to the removal of a small tumour
which had appeared on the site of a wound
received in action, he took to his heels as soon
as he caught sight of the surgeon's knife,
and left the operator and his assistant in sole
possession of the field.

Since the employment of chloroform, the
sufferer may walk to the operating theatre, free
from all dread of pain; or, if much debilitated
by disease, or the patient be one of the
gentler sex, the cup of Lethe can be
administered in bed; and, when unconsciousness
is produced, he or she is carried to the table,
the operation is completed, and the subject
of it awakes as from a tranquil sleep,
comfortably arranged in bed, and filled with
wonder and gratitude that the dreaded
calamity is past.

Walking through one of the large hospitals,
we saw a cheery little woman of two or
three and twenty, who was carefully nursing
what remained of an amputated arm. We
were told that this patient had been afflicted
with a rapidly spreading erysipelas of the forearm,
which had destroyed most of the textures
of the limb, and which, if allowed to
invade the centre of the body, would have
been beyond control or remedy. The severity
of the disease had entirely prostrated
the woman's strength, and the additional
pain and shock of removing the limb would
have been hazardous in the extreme. A
dose of chloroform, however, had saved the
patient both the pain and the shock, and, next
morning, she had exchanged the anxious
symptoms of exhausting disease, for a bright
and cheerful countenance;—her system bearing
with impunity the healthy wound made
by the surgeon's knife, while it threatened
to succumb to the putrid and disorganised
limb.

We saw, also, the robust occupant of
a bed in the men's ward, vigilantly guarding
an apparatus resembling a hen-coop,
which kept the weight of the bed-clothes