of horror, to be
exercised on almost forgotten acts, since those performed before the
eyes of the living generation have equalled or surpassed them in
violence and energy. The arch of Fernan Gonzalez, if not speedily
restored, (which is not to be expected,) runs the risk, from its
elevation and want of solidity, of being the first of the two monuments
to crumble to dust; a circumstance which, although not destitute of an
appearance of justice,--from the fact of the hero it records having
figured on an earlier page of Castilian annals,--would nevertheless
occasion regret to those who prefer history to romance, and who estimate
essential services rendered to the state, as superior to mere individual
_eclat_, however brilliant.

You will not probably object to the remainder of this letter being
monopolized by this founder of the independence of Castile; the less so,
from the circumstance of the near connection existing between his
parentage and that of the city we are visiting, and which owes to him so
much of its celebrity. Should you not be in a humour to be lectured on
history, you are at all events forewarned, and may wait for the next
despatch.

Unlike many of the principal towns of the Peninsula, which content
themselves with no more modern descent than from Nebuchadnezzar or
Hercules, Burgos modestly accepts a paternity within the domain of
probability. A German, Nuno Belchides, married, in the reign of Alonzo
the Great, King of Oviedo, a daughter of the second Count of Castile,
Don Diego Porcellos. This noble prevailed on his father-in-law to
assemble the inhabitants of the numerous villages dispersed over the
central part of the province, and to found a city, to which he gave the
German name of "city" with a Spanish termination. It was Don Fruela
III., King of Leon, whose acts of injustice and cruelty caused so
violent an exasperation, that the nobles of Castile, of whom there
existed several of a rank little inferior to that of the titular Count
of the province, threw up their allegiance, and selected two of their
own body, Nuno Rasura and Lain Calvo, to whom they intrusted the supreme
authority, investing them with the modest title of Judges, by way of a
check, lest at any future time they should be tempted, upon the strength
of a higher distinction, to make encroachments on the common liberties.

The first of the two judges, Nuno Rasura, was the son of the
above-mentioned Nuno Belchides and his wife, Sulla B