dergone; human lives are not sacrificed
wholesale in the combats; and yet the bull-fight is sufficiently
barbarous and atrocious. It is a national institution, and, as an
indication of national character, is well worthy of attention, however
repulsive to the sensitive mind. The queen of England is sometimes
present on the race-track, so also the queen of Spain occupies the
royal box at the great bull-festas of Madrid. A skilful bull-fighter is
a man of mark and distinction. Montez was regarded by the Spaniards of
this generation with nearly as much respect as Don Rodriguez de Bivar in
the days of the Moorish wars, to such a point has the vaunted chivalry
of Spain degenerated! Sometimes Spanish nobles enter the arena, and
brave peril and death for the sake of the applause bestowed upon the
successful _torero_, and many lives are lost annually in this degrading
sport.

Few professional bull-fighters reach an advanced age; their career in
the arena is almost always short, and they cannot avoid receiving severe
wounds in their dangerous career. Pepe Illo, a famous Spanish picador,
was wounded no less than twenty-six times, and finally killed by a bull.
This man and another noted _torero_, named Romero, were possessed of
such undaunted courage, that, in order to excite the interest of the
spectators, they were accustomed to confront the bull with fetters upon
their feet. Another famous picador in the annals of the arena was Juan
Sevilla, who on one occasion was charged furiously by an Andalusian bull
which overthrew both horse and rider. The savage animal, finding that
the legs of his fallen antagonist were so well protected by the
iron-ribbed hide of the pantaloons the bull-fighters wear that it was
impossible to make an impression on them, lowered his horns with the
intention of striking him in the face; but the dauntless picador,
seizing one of the bull's ears in his right hand, and thrusting the
fingers of the other into his nostrils, after a horrible struggle
compelled him to retire. Then, when every one looked to see him borne
out of the ring dying, he rose to his feet, called for a fresh horse and
lance, and bounding into the saddle, attacked the bull in the centre of
the ring, and driving the iron up to the shaft in his neck, rolled him
over dead. "O," says an enthusiastic eye-witness of this prodigious
feat, "if you had heard the _vivas_, if you had witnessed the frantic
joy, the crazy ecstasy at the display of so m