If the publication of this present work shall contribute, in any manner, to the intellectual emancipation of those favoured portions of the human race, its author will have received the only recompence which he desires.
{ 15} Cover me with flowers, For I am dying of love.
{ 16} The Virgin of Anguish, She it is who knows my grief, Because I go to her chapel And am never tired of crying.
{ 22} Isabella foresaw the advantages of free trade at a time when all Europe groaned under the yoke of the most severe prohibitions. Not only did she abolish all those which the fiscal legislation of Spain prior to her times had sanctioned, but she had the merit of being the founder of the first tribunal of commerce, and of expressly ordering that in all matters of mercantile contract, shipwrecks, &c., submitted to her judgment, barristers should take no part, so that the course of justice might not be obscured with pedantic arguments and formal technicalities.
{ 25} The Spanish Protestants and their Persecution by Philip II. By Don Adolfo de Castro. Translated from the original Spanish, by Tho. Parker. Gilpin, London, 1851.
{ 26} _Novena_. A devotional practice applicable to the worship of all saints, and consisting of music, prayer, mass, &c., and of _nine_ days’ duration.
{ 59a} On the portico of the Franciscan convent, in Granada, is to be seen a large marble slab, on which a sonnet is engraved, the first two lines of which are:—
“En provincias doscientas y setenta, Tiene Francisco doce mil conventos.” { 59b}
{ 59b} “In 270 provinces, Francis has 12,000 convents.”
{ 67} A kind of chick-pea, much used in Spain, especially in the _olla podrida_.
{ 71a} A kind of talisman hung round the neck of devout persons, which sometimes is supposed to contain relics of saints, pious prayers, or images of the Virgin.
{ 71b} “Here lies Sister Belen, Who made sweetmeats very well, And passed her whole life In dressing wax figures” [_of the infant Christ_].
{ 72} The great feudal lords who had jurisdiction over their own lands were so called, because on the limits of those lands they fixed a gallows (_horca_), with a large knife (_cuchillo_), as a symbol of their privilege.
{ 77} The vestibules of the convents are called the _porteria_. They lead to the cells of the friars, and are distinct from the entrances to the church. All women are prohibited from entering these portions of the cloisters.