o the presence of three thousand French soldiers,--is united the
contempt which the lax habits of the clergy and the puerile ceremonies of
worship inspire in the minds of all men who have received the least
education. This is precisely what is now taking place in all the
ramifications of the great Spanish family.

We have already alluded to the state of abasement and degradation in
which the clergy of the Peninsula now find themselves,--clergy who, for
many centuries swimming in opulence and surrounded by a splendour which
almost eclipsed the throne, have been the true regulators of the public
spirit of the nation, the keepers of all consciences, and who formerly
composed the most influential and powerful among all her social
categories,--these clergy who, to-day, barely maintained by the public
treasury, have been reduced to impotence, and become, as it were, a
nullity,--they are excluded from all social intercourse with the elevated
classes, and are deprived of all means of recovering their ancient
predominance. With this decay of the depositories and agents of the
papal authority and of the ultramontane ideas, other circumstances, which
it was impossible to foresee, co-operate, in order to destroy those two
scourges of humanity,--circumstances which promise better days for
evangelical truth in that nation so long enslaved by superstition and
fanaticism. Not only does the actual government harbour ideas of
religious liberty, and endeavour, by all possible means, to curb the
pride and reactionary spirit of the bishops, but many of the most
elevated public functionaries abandon the Popish creed, and openly favour
the propagation of the Bible and of the different writings which have
been recently published in London in the Castillian language, and in
which the doctrines and practices of the Roman Church are attacked with
the arms of logic and erudition. One of these publications, entitled
"_El Alba_," which is issued in numbers at indeterminate periods, finds
so much favour in all classes of Spanish society, that its editors are
constantly receiving letters of encouragement to persevere, such as those
already alluded to, from many cities in the Peninsula, as well as
reiterated demands for supplies of the work. "_El Alba_" is read
publicly in the guard-house of the national militia of Madrid, and has,
it is said, been reprinted at the common expense of the journeymen
printers of that capital, without the least obstacl