in a picturesque point of view, by a great number of windmills in full play, which line the ground on its eastern and western sides. The port is small, but secure and commodious. The city is too near the sea, and too ill protected by its walls and redoubts to be capable of long holding out against a well-directed attack: at present, nearly all its cannon has been removed to Tarragona, the captain-general and council presuming that, if the continent of Spain is lost, this island will be protected by the English.

Owing to the recent ravages of the plague at Tarragona, we were rigidly examined at the health-office, the examining physician feeling our pulses, and also high up under our armpits.

After exhibiting our passports at the palace of the governor, we were conducted to the only good fonda, or inn, in the place, kept by a Frenchman named St. Antonio, where we got a tolerably good room, and where, during our stay, we were most excellently entertained, Antonio being a professed cook; and to his culinary skill and inoffensive character, I believe, he owed his personal liberty at this time. For a breakfast of chocolate and cakes, a dinner, admirably dressed, of soup, meat, fowls, and generally two dishes of game, either rabbit, hare, quails, partridges, thrushes, or snipes, with which the island abounds, pastry, abundance of the best of wine, a dessert of the finest fruits, coffee, a supper nearly as plentiful as the dinner, and our lodging, we were only charged to the amount of about seven shillings English apiece. We found the pork very fine, the mutton excellent, but the beef poor. As Palma is very little resorted to by travellers, the inns are very few and very bad. We were invited to the house of our consul, who was also American consul; but we were speedily warned by persons of high rank in the city, not to accept of his invitation, as he was of Jewish descent, and on that account held incapable of being admitted to respectable intercourse. The impolitic manner in which British consuls are appointed abroad deserves some attention from the legislature. A consul is an officer appointed by commission in a foreign country to protect and facilitate the mercantile interest of the princes or chiefs by whom he is appointed. He is to prevent any insult being offered or any wrong done to their merchants, and he is to correspond with the ministers residing at the court upon which his consulate depends. The British consul at Palma does not know a word of English; and on account of his Judaic origin, he is held in a state of contempt and degradation by the people. He officiates also for America and the Barbary States. The time is not very distant, when a Jew could not appear with personal safety in this island; and numerous are the instances of Jews having being consigned to the flames, to appease the angry and unjust prejudices of the people. Many of the ancestors of this very man were burnt

on this account. It is related that the monks, in whose church the portraits of most of these unhappy persons, who at various periods had thus been sacrificed, were suspended, were applied to by this very consul, to let him have the pictures of several of his ancestors who had suffered-that he also endeavoured to win over the holy fathers with a considerable sum to put him in possession of these painful, and as it was considered dishonourable, vestiges, that they might be destroyed that the monks consented, but previously had copies of them taken, which soon after the money was paid, were suspended in the room of those which had been withdrawn, to the no little mortification of the deluded consul-and that the mercenary deception was considered a good joke all over the city, because the peace of a Jew happened to be its victim.

The cathedral, one of the most imposing objects in the city, built by James the Conqueror, King of Arragon, is a vast and magnificent gothic structure, entered by three noble gates. The effect of the interior notwithstanding the interruption of the choir is very fine. On the day when I saw it first, the effect was much increased by a grand military and monastic procession round the aisles, in honour of the anniversary of king Ferdinand's birth-day. Some of the windows of stained glass are very beautiful, and in the sachristy we were shewn the church treasure consisting of large and magnificent candlesticks of solid silver exquisitely wrought, salvers, a la custodia, and relics set in gold and diamonds, of great value. In an iron railing between the choir and the principal altar, decorated with gilt bronze, and surmounted with a silver crown, is a marble sarcophagus, from one end of which, the body of James the Second arrayed in his robes, lying in a drawer, was drawn out, and considering that the monarch had been dead very nearly five hundred years, the face and body appeared to be in a state of extraordinary preservation. On the sarcophagus is the following inscription.

Acqui reposa el cadaver del Serenissimo
Sr. Dn. Jayme de Arragon,

2d. Rey de Mallorca,

Que merce la mas pias y laudable
Memoria en los annalos,

Falicio en 28 de Mayo, &c. 1311.

Don James, grandson of Alphonso the second king of Arragon, the predecessor of this sovereign, conquered this island, and finally expelled the Moors, who had retaken it from the generals of Raymond Berenger, after he had returned to Catalonia in 1229. In the attack of the island, Don James is reported to have displayed the most undaunted courage and unshaken firmness. Upon

Palma being taken by storm, the rest of the island submitted and was incorporated with the kingdom of Arragon, and at length, after many petty feuds, and insurrections, annexed to the crown of Spain. The episcopal palace adjoining the cathedral is a handsome building.

On the day of our visit to this cathedral, we were presented to the captain-general, Don Francisco Del Cuesta, at the levee held in the ancient palace of the kings of this island, at which all the noblemen, officers of state, and constituted authorities attended in their full costume, the whole presenting a princely appearance; after which we had the honour of dining with his excellency, who placed me on his right hand. The dinner, prepared under the direction of Antonio, our host, was splendid, and in a high degree excellent, and the room cooled by a prodigious large flyHapper, suspended over the table, and kept in motion during the banquet, at which the most distinguished nobility of the island, and several fugitive grandees from the mother-country were present, all of whom cordially joined in the toasts which were given in honour of England and Spain. In this palace there is nothing worthy of notice except the vestibule and stone stair-case, arsenal, magazine, chapel royal, and prison, the gardens belonging to it, and a beautiful view which it commands of the sea and country. At this levee the poor British consul, to my no little mortification, was not admitted, and all the honour allowed him was a permission to send some game from his estate to augment the profusion of good things which graced the vice-regal table. In the evening there was an illumination, as it was miscalled, which, although numerous parties were formed to view it, was not very creditable to the city, if the loyalty of the inhabitants was only in a ratio to their light.

The front of the town-house, which is a noble building richly decorated with sculpture, appeared on this occasion en gala; a large quantity of red velvet covered a great part of its basement floor, before which the portraits of the royal family were exposed to the view of the spectators. In one of the public rooms within this building, are portraits of distinguished Spaniards, natives of this island, or who had large property in it. Amongst others, I noticed those of the intrepid and loyal Romana and his gallant brother Caro. There is also a fine painting of St. Sebastian, the tutelar Saint of Majorca, by Vandyke, purchased at Madrid some years since. In the palace of the Marquis de Ariang, we were shewn several pictures, but scarcely any of them were worthy of notice; the best appeared to be some naked figures, which the excessive modesty of the lord or lady of the mansion had placed in such darkness as to be scarcely visible. Thence we were taken to the palace of the Count de Negro,

where we saw a much better collection; amongst which were a fine head by Vandyke, a Vernet, and two beautiful Flemish pictures: there was also a head of the Virgin exquisitely wrought in mosaic. Upon the basement floor were several fine busts, particularly one of Augustus, for which we were informed eight hundred pounds English had been offered and refused by the noble possessor. There were also some fine specimens of porphyry, several small antiques, and some good casts. We were informed that the count has an equally good collection at his country-house, but we did not see them.

In

In the coro of a capuchin convent near the gate of St. Marquerita, where the Spaniards entered when they expelled the Moors, we were shewn a very large painting of the crucifixion, confidently said to be by Titian, but it has been irreparably spoiled by the ignorance and negligence of those who removed it from the house of the person who bequeathed it to the convent. the library are several valuable books and original manuscripts, amongst which is a history of Majorca, and the contract drawn up and agreed upon by the conquering Spanish generals for the partition of the island. There is an academy for painting here, but the pupils are at present not very promising.

The prison is tolerably commodious and clean, and, owing to the well-known honesty of the Majorcans, it is but thinly tenanted. The Alameda is an agreeable walk, but not much frequented. The markets are abundantly supplied with every necessary, and what in England would be called every luxury. Fish, fowls, game, and fruits are in great profusion. So cheap is living in this happy island, that a married couple may keep an elegant house in the country, with olive-grounds, gardens, orangegroves, and vineyards, a plentiful table, drink the most delicious wines of the island, keep a carriage and a pair of mules, a suitable number of servants, and educate a family of children, in a refined manner, and associate with the best society, upon five hundred a year.

The exchange is a very curious Gothic edifice, containing a magnificent hall, which, owing to the merchants being more disposed to assemble in the open air, than under cover, is now much neglected, and is at present a depôt for corn. Towards the sea, the principal street is broad, and many of the houses are very large and magnificent.

The rent of a tolerably good house is about seventy dollars a year; formerly upon an assignment of one, a fine was paid to the king, but this is now done away. There are about seven thousand houses in Palma. The population of the city is averaged at thirty-two thousand; that of the whole island, which is fifty leagues round, at eighty-seven thousand. This account varies

from the enumeration given by other travellers, but I was repeatedly assured that it was correct. In Palma there are seven parochial churches, eight convents, four consecrationes, the occupiers of which are religious, but neither monks nor friars, ten nunneries, three colleges, three oratories, five churches, deserted and shut up; there is also an Inquisition, in the prison of which several persons were confined when I was there. The native regular military of the island is two thousand, and every male adult resident in the island is obliged to enrol himself for its defence in case of invasion. The monks and friars are two thousand, and the ecclesiastics two thousand five hundred.

There is a beautiful walk, much frequented, to a castle called Belver, about a mile and a half from Palma, through the gate of Catalina, along the cliff, from which there is a fine view of the bay and city. The wind-mills, which abound in this direction, are very small, as I am informed, about the size of those in La Mancha, celebrated for having been the objects of chivalrous assault by the immortal knight of that province. These mills are numerous, on account of the general want of powerful streams in the island. In this castle, which is singularly picturesque, its ancient walls being in many places covered with the caper, three French generals were confined. From the leads we had a wide and beautiful prospect, and could easily distinguish the island of Cabrera, lying about nine miles to the north-east of Cabo de Salinas. This island is about two miles and three-quarters from east to west, and about three miles from the south-west to the north-east. In this barren and desolate place, sufficiently dreary to drive to madness any other being but a native of France, there were no less than five thousand French prisoners shut up; who, however, by the assistance of gambling, dancing, and a theatre, contrived to dissipate the gloom which surrounded them. This island is very injudiciously converted into a depôt for prisoners of war. It is possible that the weather might be so boisterous as to prevent the victualling boats from going to it from Majorca, and also that vessels might be driven in stress of weather into its bays and harbours, by which many of the prisoners might effect their escape.

There is a tolerable theatre here. The people appeared to me more musically inclined here than any part of the continent of Spain I had visited; I often heard the castinets well played. The most esteemed are made of the pomegranate wood, and to improve their tone they are fried in oil for a short time. The fandango and volero are great favourites here. There are also several good public institutions for the poor, aged, and infirm.

Having visited every object worthy of notice in the city, I joined an agreeable party on mules to the celebrated monastery of