best Spanish wines. Andalusia is the most fertile province. There is a proverb current in the Castiles and La Mancha, that l'eau seule du Guadalquiver engraisse plus ces chevaux, que l'orge des autres pays. The bread of Andalusia passes for the whi est and most exquisite in the world, and the olives are of most extraordinary size. They are gathered towards the end of winter, and the country presents at that season the smiling and animated appearance which is only seen in mere northern climates at vintage or at harvest time. Under the shade of the long plantations of olive, vines and corn spring alternately: the fields are surrounded by hedges of aloes, whose leaves are as pointed as lances, and whose straight slender stems shoot up to the height of trees. Here and there orchards are seen behind the dwelling houses, planted with orange trees; and the white laurel and the oleander flourish on the waste lands on the banks of the rivulets. A few old palm trees are still seen in the gardens of the clergy, who preserve them for the sake of distributing the branches on Palm Sunday. The appearance of the towns does not correspond with this agreeable picture of the country. The streets, narrow, crooked and winding, with the stories of the houses jutting out further the higher they are, are not made for carriages. Behind the grated windows or balconies are seated the Spanish women, who keep themselves almost always at home, and observe all who pass, without being themselves seen. From the same places they listen in the evenings to the guitars of their lovers." Excepting a few hotels, founded by Italians in the large cities, the inns are only large caravanseras, where nothing is found but lodging, and room for horses and mules. Travellers carry provisions with them, and sleep upon their horsecloths. The churches are very numerous; Madrid has 600; and nothing is more striking to the ear of a Protestant, than the noise of the numerous bells, ringing in continued peals from sunrise to sunset. There exists a nobility of cities as well as of men, and old institutions are so much respected, that their capital still bears the name of Villa, or country town, while some poor villages pride themselves on that of Ciudad, ar city, which they have inherited by some ancient privileges. When a Spaniard is asked where he is born, he answers, I am the son of such a town; and the expression causes him to attach more value to the dignity of his native city. The men wear large dark-coloured cloaks; the women are in black, and a black woollen veil, covering almost entirely their head and shoulders, and sometimes hiding the whole face, except the eyes and nose, sets off the paleness of their complexion and the brilliancy of their eyes. This gloomy costume, added to the severe and reserved air of 4 all all classes, gave rise to the saying among the French soldiers during the first part of their stay in Madrid, that the city was peopled only by priests and nuns. The women are generally short their step is bold and quick; the wives of the mountaineers are distinguished by their gigantic size, robust limbs and bold looks: they carry heavy burthens with ease, and boast of the superior strength given them by habit; they have been seen wrestling together, and striving who shall lift the heaviest stones. They are fond of dressing in fine stuffs and veils, which they obtain by smuggling, and which form a curious contrast with their dark sunburnt complexions and the coarseness of their features. Their market is held early in the morning, and the tumultuous concourse of provincials and townspeople, variously clothed, vociferating with unceasing gestures and shouts, going, coming, arriving, and departing, affords a busy picture, which can only be conceived by those who have witnessed the contrast between southern gaiety and bustle, and the sober reverse of the northern nations, among whom all goes on so silently. The Castilian with his amply folding cloak,--the drover from La Mancha with a long goad in his hand, and clad in a kelt of hide, the Andalusian with his hair bound with long silken fillets, and wearing a sort of short brown vest, chequered with blue and red, and distinguished by his animated looks, and the rapidity of his utterance,-women preparing food on stoves, at the corners of the streets, or in the public squares,-water car riers pacing along, and calling with their slow nasal accent, Quien quière aqua? who wants water? and upon nobody appearing to buy, answering himself from time to time, Dios que la da, God who gives it,-long strings of mules, laden with skins of wine or oil, or droves of asses, led by a single man, who talks to them unceasingly,-carriages drawn by eight or ten mules, ornamented with little bells, and driven with surprising address by one coachman, without reins, and by means of his voice only, or a long sharp whistle, which serves to stop them all at the same moment. Such is the mixture of the motley. group which bursts upon the view, and bewilders the imagination of those who are accustomed to see the most importaut and extensive concerns transacted with a quietness and sedate air, which gives no token of any deep interest or anxiety in the business which is carrying on. Those whom the preceding outline shall incline to take up M. Rocca's volume, will find it an entertaining and unassuming attempt to describe scenes and manners little seen and less known than their proximity would lead us to expect--with less pretension than might be looked for from the school of Stael, and with none of the affectation which is too common in the present tawdry age of French literature. ART. ART. VI. Belsham's Claims of Dr. Priestley revived, &c. (Concluded from page 519.) WE closed our observations, on the Claims of Dr. Priestley, as revived by Mr. Belsham, with an inference deducible from the testimony of St. Epiphanius and St. Jerome, relative to the existence of a Synagogue of Nazarenes at Jerusalem. It was then our object to prove that there was some ground beyond that which is merely conjectural, for the assumption of Bishop Horsley, relative to the continuance of the orthodox Hebrew Church, at Elia, after the expulsion of the Jews under Hadrian. Let us now hear what Dr. Priestley objects in reply; quoting the words of Bishop Horsley, he observes: "I maintain," you say, p. 371. " that there is no reason to believe, that the Hebrew Christians quietly settled at Ælia before the Jewish rebellion were included in Adrian's edict for the banishment of the Jews." But were not," replies Dr. Priestley, "Hebrew christians Hebrews, or Jews? and were not all the Jews, without any distinction of christians or no christians, banished both from that place and from the district by Adrian." Tracts, p. 448. Such precisely is the objection which we should have expected from one, in whose vocabulary the words Jew, Christian, Ebionite, and Nazarene, are taken as synonymous terms. The Romans however, with whom the law originated, and by whom it was enforced, were not such gross confounders of the most ob vious distinctions. The edict issued by Hadrian was occasioned by the insurrection of the Jews under Barchocheb*; but the crime of those rebels against the Roman authority consisted in their opposing the erection of a heathen temple on the site of the temple of Jerusalem +. This crime they aggravated by setting up a temporal Messiah, to whom, under pain of death, they required the submission of the Christians and Jews. This usur pation of the lawful authority, the Christians resisted, even to death; as not merely incompatible with the submission which they owed to Cæsar, but to Christ §. Not to insist on the folly of supposing the Romans would have adopted the absurd policy * Euseb. Lib. IV. cap. vi. p. 146. 1. 1. Just. Mart. Apol. Maj. 72. d. Dio. Hist. Rom. Lib. LXIX. cap. xiv. p. 1163. Just. Mart. ibid. Foly Mart. cap. x. p. 199. Conf. Euseb. Ib. Lib. IV. cap. xv. p. 188. 1. 4. of 1 of banishing their friends indiscriminately with their foes; it is indisputable they offered protection to some Christians of the Gentile communion*. An edict had in fact been issued by Hadrian, under which the Christians were not only protected, but allowed to make their defence before the Roman tribunals ; being merely subject to legal penalties, when they were convicted of some infraction of the Roman laws t. As this edict passed in favour of the Christians in the tenth year of Hadrian's reign, six years previously to that issued by the same emperor against the Jews; it must have afforded the former protection, during the violent persecution which raged against the latter in the whole of that prince's reign. Were not this fact placed beyond controversion, by the establishment of a Christian Church, under a Gentile bishop, in the new city which Hadrian founded, on the site of Jerusalem §, it might be deduced from the tolerating spirit which guided the Roman policy, with respect to the Christians, from the reign of that prince to that of Marcus Aurelius. The terms in which an edict is couched, which was issued by the latter prince, fully evince, that in his reign, not less than in that of his predecessor Antoninus Pius who directly succeeded to Hadrian, the protection afforded the Christians by the last mentioned emperor had not been intermitted, while the Jews were persecuted and expelled from their native land. Now, the process which the Romans must have followed, in distinguishing the Christians thus tolerated, if not from the Heathens yet from the Jews, must have afforded the Nazarenes the protection granted to Christians; and furnishes us with means of demonstrating, that they were orthodox in their notions of the person of Christ. The unconverted Gentiles were at once distinguished from the Jews and Christians by the rite of heathen sacrifice; in which both the latter declined participating, as abominable and prow fane **. But by this negative test, the believing Gentiles, who were tolerated, could not be distinguished from the Jews who were proscribed. But by acknowledging Christ, as their Sove *Euseb. Ibid. cap. vi. p. 146. 1. 5. $qq. + Hadrian. Edict. ap. eund. Hist. Eccl. Lib. IV. cap. ix. p. 153. 1. 18. 1 Euseb. Chronic. ad Ann. cxxvii. cxxxiii. p. 167. Id. Hist. Eccl. Lib. IV. cap. v. p. 143. 1. 22. sqq. Marc. Aurel. Edict. ap. eund. Ibid. cap. xiii. p. 160. 1. 9. 1 Id. ibid..p. 160. l. 6. ** Plin. Epist. Lib. X. cap. xcvii. p. 723. $. Polycap. Mart. cap. viii. p. 198. 7 reign Lord, whose kingdom was in heaven, not on earth, they at once proved themselves innoxious to the Romans, and distinguished themselves from the Jews. This discriminating test of their religious persuasion, it is unquestionable, the Heathen rulers required*. And as it is indisputable, that it would be given by orthodox Hebrews not less than the Gentiles; as it would be refused by the Ebionites not less than the Jews: both the former might have equally enjoyed that toleration which both the latter were denied. These suppositions, however, are respectively confirmed, by the fact, that a Christian Church continued established at Eliat, from the times of Hadrian to Constantine the Great; while the Ebionites, as affected by those edicts which expelled the Jews, remained without the confines of the Holy Land, at Pella and Cochabis, whither they had retired on the breaking out of the war. In fact, as the edicts issued by the emperors, against the Jews, were necessarily intended to secure the Roman authority, they expressly afforded protection to all who did not stand opposed to the Roman laws. No pledge however could be given by the Ebionites, which could be accepted as a security by the Romans: no proscription could be enforced against the Jews, in which they would not be involved. They were virtually Jews, differing from that people, but in their belief of the identity of the Messiah: the one looking for his second coming, while the other believed that he had not appeared. They had the same attachment to ritual purifications, the same superstitious veneration for the temple, the same abhorrence at seeing its sanctity profaned by the heathen rites. And as they equally venerated the Levitical service, and looked forward to its perfect restoration, they expected, in their Messiah, a temporal deliverer, who would free them from their subjection to the Romans, and abolish the Gentile power. As these were the identical principles which rendered the Jews formidable to the Romans, and against which the Roman edicts were directed, they must have necessarily affected the Ebionites, who held those obnoxious principles in common with, the Jews. Whether therefore we consider the positive security which the Nazarenes were enabled to give the Romans, that they pos sessed no disaffection to their government, or the positive inability under which the Ebionites lay, to give any pledge, that they were not animated by the hostile principles of the Jews: Euseb. Hist. Eccl. Lib. III. cap. xx. p. 110. 1. 16. + Id. ibid. Lib. IV. cap. v. p. 143. 1. 22. sqq. S. Epiphan. Hær. xxix, p. 124. b. Id. ibid. Hær. xxx. p. 125. d, |