ty, what profaneness, what whoredoms, nay,
what sins of Sodom are committed in it, insomuch that it could be the
saying of a friar to myself, while I was in it, that he verily thought
there was no one city in the world wherein were more Atheists than in
Rome. I might show this much in Madrid, Seville, Valladolid, and other
famous cities in Spain and in Italy; in Milan, Genoa, and Naples;
relating many instances of scandals committed in those places, and yet
the temples are mightily enriched by those who have thought their alms
a sufficient warrant to free them from hell and purgatory. But I must
return to Mexico, which furnishes a thousand witnesses of this
truth--sin and wickedness abounding in it--and yet no such people in
the world toward the Church and clergy. In their lifetime they strive
to excel one another in their gifts to the cloisters of nuns and
friars, some erecting altars to their best-devoted saints, worth many
thousand ducats, others presenting crowns of gold to the pictures of
Mary, others lamps, others golden chains, others building cloisters at
their own charge, others repairing them, others, at their death,
leaving to them two or three thousand ducats for an annual stipend.

MEXICO TWO CENTURIES AGO.

"Among these great benefactors to the churches of that city, I should
wrong my history if I should forget one that lived in my time, called
Alonzo Cuellar, who was reported to have a closet in his house laid
with bars of gold instead of brick; though indeed it was not so, but
only reported for his abundant riches and store of bars of gold, which
he had in one chest, standing in a closet distant from another, where
he had a chest full of wedges of silver. This man alone built a nunnery
for Franciscan nuns, which stood him in above 30,000 ducats, and left
unto it, for the maintenance of the nuns, 2000 ducats yearly, with
obligation of some masses to be said in the church every year for his
soul after his decease. And yet this man's life was so scandalous, that
commonly, in the night, with two servants, he would go round the city
visiting such scandalous persons, whose attire before hath been
described, carrying his beads in his hands, and at every house letting
fall a bead, and tying a false knot, that when he came home in the
morning, toward break of the day, he might number by his beads the
uncivil stations he had walked and visited that night.

"Great alms and liberality toward religious houses in