live by disseminating light.  We love our profession, and have all more or less suffered for it; many of us, in the times of terror, were hanged for selling an innocent translation from the French or English.  Shortly after the Constitution was put down by Angouleme and the French bayonets, I was obliged to flee from Saint James and take refuge in the wildest part of Galicia, near Corcuvion.  Had I not possessed good friends, I should not have been alive now; as it was, it cost me a considerable sum of money to arrange matters.  Whilst I was away, my shop was in charge of the ecclesiastical officers.  They frequently told my wife that I ought to be burnt for the books which I had sold.  Thanks be to God, those times are past, and I hope they will never return.”

Once, as we were walking through the streets of Saint James, he stopped before a church and looked at it attentively.  As there was nothing remarkable in the appearance of this edifice, I asked him what motive he had for taking such notice of it.  “In the days of the friars,” said he, “this church was one of refuge, to which if the worst criminals escaped, they were safe.  All were protected there save the negros, as they called us liberals.”  “Even murderers, I suppose?” said I.  “Murderers!” he answered, “far worse criminals than they.  By the by, I have heard that you English entertain the utmost abhorrence of murder.  Do you in reality consider it a crime of very great magnitude?” “How should we not,” I replied; “for every other crime some reparation can be made; but if we take away life, we take away all.  A ray of hope with respect to this world may occasionally enliven the bosom of any other criminal, but how can the murderer hope?” “The friars were of another way of thinking,” replied the old man; “they always looked upon murder as a friolera; but not so the crime of marrying your first cousin without dispensation, for which, if we believe them, there is scarcely any atonement either in this world or the next.”

Two or three days after this, as we were seated in my apartment in the posada, engaged in conversation, the door was opened by Antonio, who, with a smile on his countenance, said that there was a foreign gentleman below, who desired to speak with me.  “Show him up,” I replied; whereupon almost instantly appeared Benedict Mol.

“This is a most extraordinary person,” said I to the bookseller.  “You Galicians, in general, leave your country in quest of money; he, on the contrary, is come hither to find some.”

Rey Romero.—­And he is right.  Galicia is by nature the richest province in Spain, but the inhabitants are very stupid, and know not how to turn the blessings which surround them to any account; but as a proof of what may be made out of Galicia, see how rich the Catalans become who have settled down here and formed establishments.  There are riches all around us, upon the earth and in the earth.