Velasquez, and attended by slaves carrying China silk parasols with deep fringes, to shield their mistresses from the sun. In one corner a slave is being sold, while in another a sacred image is carried in procession by a number of friars. Half-naked negroes are running about hawking bananas, oranges, and pineapples. To the left of the market-place is a church, now no longer in existence, which must, I presume, have been that of San Domingo, annexed to which were the prisons of the Holy Office, which undesirable institution was established early in the 16th century, soon after the foundation of the colony. It worked in Cuba with as much fierce cruelty as in all the other Spanish dominions, and autos da fé of heretics and heathens were a frequent form of entertainment. Early, too, in the 17th century, a good-sized theatre, where the plays of Calderon and Lope de Vaga were doubtless performed, was opened in Havana. In Holy Week, autos, or sacred dramas, were given in the open, "weather permitting." In a word, Havanese life, in those far-off times, was a reflection of life in Spain as it has been depicted by Cervantes and Lesage, and the Countess d'Aulnoy.

Very soon after the Conquest, the Church obtained large grants of valuable property, and down to the first quarter of the present century a good fifth of the island was Church property. Most of the great religious orders were represented-including the Benedictines and the Carthusians. The Franciscan and Dominican friars had a number of priories in various parts of the island, and were much esteemed by the people, whom they steadily befriended. To their credit, be it re

corded, the Dominican friars occupied themselves a great deal with the condition of the slaves, obtained the freedom of many, and redressed the wrongs of thousands. The Jesuits made their first appearance very soon after the creation of their celebrated order. They established themselves in Havana, Santiago, Matanzas, and Puerto Principe, where they opened Colleges for the education of the sons of the upper classes. There were also many nunneries, peopled generally by sisters from Europe, who educated the daughters of the wealthy, and gave primary instruction to the children of the people. As is usually the case in Catholic countries, numbers of churches were built, some of them of considerable architectural pretensions, in the well-known Hispano-American style, of which many excellent examples are still extant, not only in Havana, but throughout the whole of South America. Some of the more popular shrines, like that of Neustra Señora de Cobre, the Lourdes of Cuba, were, and are still, rich in ex votos, in gold, silver, and even jewels.

The Holy Week ceremonies still remain rather crude reproductions of those which annually attract so many hundreds of visitors to Seville. But notwithstanding the existence of many learned and estimable prelates and priests, the general character of the clergy in Cuba has been indifferent, and I am afraid the Cubans have ever held the gorgeous ceremonies of their Church in greater affection than her moral teachings.

Up till 1788, the Cuban Church was ruled by a

single bishop, but in that year it was divided into two dioceses, each covering about one half of the island. In 1804, Santiago, the eastern diocese, was raised to the dignity of an archbishopric. The other, which contains the city of Havana, still remains a bishopric.

The European revolutions of the end of the last and the beginning of the present centuries had their effect on Cuba, and a great number of monasteries and convents were closed, their inmates scattered, and their property confiscated.

Unfortunately, the Inquisition, which had been implanted at an early period everywhere in the Spanish colonies, with the object of compelling the aborigines and the imported slaves to embrace Catholicism, was used as a means of overawing refractory colonists, who were soon made aware that either open or covert disapprobation of the proceedings of their rulers was the most deadly of all heresies. From the middle of the 17th century until the close of the 18th, the annals of the Havanese Inquisition contain endless charges of heresy against native-born Spaniards charges which were in reality merely expressions of political displeasure, and had nothing whatever to do with religion.

The palace of the Holy Office and its prisons, which stood close to the Church of San Domingo, were destroyed many years ago, and are now replaced by the old market-place of Cristina, once the scene of an unusual number of autos da fé-a favourite form of religious entertainment in South America, it would

appear, for in a curious old book, dated 1683, which I picked up in Havana for a few pence, the author complains of the dull times, "nobody, not even a negro, having been burnt alive for nearly six months." A Havanese auto da fé, in the palmy days of Spanish supremacy, must have been quite a pretty sight, including, as it did, an allegorical procession to the place of execution, with children dressed in white as angels, and little nigger boys as devils, tails and horns complete, dancing before the condemned, who, of course, wore the traditional san benito, a sort of high mitre and shirt, embellished with demoniacal representations of Satan and his imps, capering amid flames and forked lightning. Then came the Governor and his court, the civil and military officials, the clergy, the monks, and the friars singing the seven penitential psalms-in a word, everything "muy grandioso y espectacolos."

The early years of the 18th century were exceedingly prosperous for Cuba. The buccaneers and pirates had almost entirely ceased from troubling. The sugar trade was at its zenith, and although the Spanish administration was vile, the governors rapacious, and the taxation preposterous, colossal fortunes were made by the Cuban planters, and the name of the island was synonymous with the idea of wealth and riotous living. The Havanese carnival was almost as brilliant in its way as that of Venice, and public and private gambling was tolerated on a scale which attracted adventurers from all parts of the southern hemisphere. Those were halcyon days, disturbed in 1762 by the rather

unexpected appearance, in the port of Havana, of an English war squadron of 32 sail, with 170 transports, bearing a considerable body of troops under the command of his Grace of Albemarle and Sir George Picknell. This formidable armament, altogether the largest America had yet seen, laid siege to the city, which surrendered after an heroic defence of two months' duration. The British troops were landed and marched on Guanacaboa, from the heights of which place they fired down upon Morro Castle and the city proper. The Spaniards made a fatal mistake-blocking up the harbour by sinking two vessels at its mouth. This they did to exclude the English and prevent the destruction of the Spanish fleet. But though they did shut out the English they also imprisoned themselves, and the enemy, seeing it was impossible for the Dons to escape, even if they would, directed their whole attention to their land attack. After a gallant struggle, the Spaniards, who numbered some 27,600 men, surrendered, and were permitted to march out of the city with the honours of war, the spoil divided by the British amounting to £736,000. The English troops next took Matanzas, and remained in possession of this portion of the island of Cuba for nine months, when, by the Treaty of Paris, it was restored to Spain, in exchange for Florida. During the British occupation the trade of the country was greatly improved by the importation of slaves from other British possessions and by the newcomers' superior knowledge of agriculture; so that the invasion proved, on the whole, a distinct benefit to the country, opening out a new era of prosperity for the Spaniards and other