serves, all
sorts of music, which is so exquisite in that city that I dare be bold
to say that the people are drawn to churches more for the delight of
the music than for any delight in the service of God. More, they teach
these young children to act like players; and, to entice the people to
the churches, they make these children act short dialogues in their
choirs, richly attiring them with men and women's apparel, especially
upon Midsummer's day and the eight days before their Christmas, which
is so gallantly performed that many factious strifes and single combats
have been, and some were in my time, for defending which of these
nunneries most excelled in music and in the training up of children."

Such is a picture drawn by a candid writer of one of the most devout
Catholic cities in the world, where licentiousness and papacy went hand
in hand until they reached that extreme point of corruption, that, as
in the case of Sodom, God overthrew the city by a judgment from heaven;
not by fire and brimstone, but by a water-spout, which, in the space of
the five years that it lay upon the town three feet deep, loosened the
foundations of all buildings and impoverished the inhabitants. And when
at length the earth opened and swallowed up these waters, the city had
to be rebuilt. The misery and distress that this flood inflicted upon
the lower orders of the inhabitants was great in the extreme.

It was on Sunday morning that the cause of the moral superiority of the
American miners over those of Mexico was visible. Then the noise and
bustle about my residence was hushed. The most immoral seemed to be
overawed by a sense of respect for the religious opinions of others;
and when the sound of a ship-bell, hung on the limb of a tree, was
heard, all except the baser sort repaired to the shade of an oak, so
large and venerable that it might have shielded the whole household of
Abraham while engaged in family worship. A portable seraphine gave
forth a familiar tune, in which all joined in singing with a zest which
is only realized by those whom it carries back in recollection to
distant home. Then the voice of the preacher was heard invoking the
blessing of God upon the assembled worshipers, and his pardon of their
offenses; and then followed his exhortation to seek from God the pardon
of their many sins; and as he, with heartfelt earnestness, "reasoned of
righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come," many a
stern-visaged min